Friday, June 19, 2015

Pandora, Texas, 78143, where everybody is married

Pandora is in Wilson County, southeast of San Antonio and a few miles east of Nixon. Eighty-five people live in Wilson – 66 white, 1 black, 37 Hispanic, 18 “other.” Perhaps the remaining 10 are from the space craft that crashed in Aurora in 1897. Aurora is a good ways north and west, but a group of aliens might decide a town named for a mythological character a better place to live than a town named after northern lights.

Pandora has 43 women and 42 men. Median age for women is 32.5; for men, 40.5. Average household value is $9,999 and average per household income is $18,333. That is what http://zipcode.org/78143 says, anyway. That income would mean an average of 100% of Pandora residents live below the poverty level.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hnp07 says:

“Pandora is at the junction of U.S. Highway 87 and Farm Road 1107, twenty miles northeast of Floresville in eastern Wilson County. The area was probably first settled in the mid-nineteenth century. The town was established in the late 1890s as a stop on the San Antonio and Gulf Railroad. Wesley Irvin opened the first store there around 1900, and a post office was established in 1906. By 1914 the community had three general stores, two blacksmiths, a cotton gin, a druggist, a meat market, and a population of 100. Its population was reported as 200 in 1947. Afterward the number of residents slowly declined, and in 1990 the estimated population of Pandora was 125. The population remained the same in 2000.”

You would think somebody could count these days – the difference between 125 and 85. Or, maybe 40 people moved from Pandora in the last 15 years.

Here is a satellite image: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.2539442,-97.8395955,645m/data=!3m1!1e3 Lots of mesquite and scrub oak; lots of dry. What you expect near San Antonio.

All Pandora’s residents have a high school education; all are married. All residents work at home. http://www.city-data.com/zips/78143.html


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