Town of Penelope

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I tell it back to you. The town of Penelope, Hill County, Texas. Somebody had a child, and that child had a name, and that name is now on the map.

The International and Great Northern Railroad founded this town in 1902, and one of the officials thought enough of his child to give that child's name to the whole place. We don't know which official, we don't know which child, but the name stuck, and here we are. Penelope.

There's something almost tender about that, a railroad town named for somebody's kid. The iron and the soot and the commerce, and right in the middle of it, a child's name. Now, Penelope didn't rise up out of empty prairie.

About a half mile to the south sat a town called Zee Vee, founded back in 1893. Anglo settlers and Czech settlers had been making a go of it there for years. When the railroad came through in 1902 and the new town took shape, those folks picked up and moved.

They brought themselves and their roots and their ways north to Penelope, and the new town prospered. By 1913 it had incorporated, which is a town's way of saying, we're serious, we're staying. Now here's the part that a lot of people overlook when they think about what makes a town.

Water. Good, reliable well water. Penelope didn't find it until 1959.

You think about a community going decade after decade, and then one day the ground gives up what it was holding all along. And then the town looked around and decided to keep building. A town improvement program got underway in 1968.

That's the story the marker tells. A railroad, a child's name, two groups of settlers willing to move half a mile for a better future, and a town stubborn enough to keep improving long after it had any reason to prove itself.

What the marker says

Founded by International and Great Northern Railroad in 1902. Named for child of official. Settled by Anglos and Czechs from Zee Vee, older town (1/2 mile south) founded in 1893. New town prospered; incorporated, 1913. Good well water was found in 1959. Town improvement program began, 1968.