Sanford, Texas

Sanford is in the Texas Panhandle. There’s not much to see. Well, that's not entirely true. Like other places in the Panhandle, Sanford has lots to see, it's just that most of the views are land, land and more land, mesquite trees, red dirt and scrub oak, low hills, and dry gulches (arroyos in Spanish). Sanford, population nearer 150 than 200, just doesn’t have a whole lot of touristy places.

Sanford does have Uncle Bob’s Beer and Bail, on Main Street. Uncle Bob’s is listed as a storage location and doesn’t have much, if anything, to do with beer and bail.

The Texas State Historical Association has this:

SANFORD, TEXAS. Sanford, just south of the Canadian River in southwestern Hutchinson County, was named for J. M. Sanford, on whose ranch land it was established. It was founded in 1927 as a result of the county's oil boom when the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway extended its Amarillo-Liberal line through this area. Sanford was populated largely by boomers and oil company employees. During its first year a post office, a lumber yard, a school, a cafe, and a two-story brick hotel were erected. Though many boomers later moved on to other areas, Sanford became a stable petroleum town. In 1933 Natural Gas Pipeline built what was then the largest compressor station in the world beside the railroad tracks seven miles southwest of Sanford. With further development of the Panhandle oil and gas field came the construction of three carbon black plants (see CARBON BLACK INDUSTRY) around Sanford. In addition, Henderson Trusts and Phillips Petroleum Company built two gasoline refineries there. In the early 1950s, after the carbon black plants were closed, Colorado Interstate Gas Company built its first compressor station at Sanford. In 1940 Sanford had five businesses and a population of sixty. With the advent of Sanford Dam and Lake Meredith in the 1960s, however, Sanford was incorporated and experienced new growth. The Sanford school district merged with that of Fritch in 1961. The 1980 census listed several small businesses in Sanford; the population was 249. In 1990 the population was 218. The population dropped to 203 in 2000.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hls18

The town’s biggest population was 249, in 1980.

Wikipedia says: “About 24.2% of families and 27.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 45.9% of those under the age of eighteen and 7.4% of those sixty five or over.”

All city streets are dirt.

A search on Sanford brought one very surprising web site claim: “918 Jobs in Sanford, Texas.” Dang. That’s a bunch of jobs in a town of under 200 people.

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