Putnam- Almost A Ghost

When one hears the words "ghost town", they generally tend to picture something out of a sleepy, 2 AM episode of Gunsmoke; rotting storefronts along a boardwalk in a dusty plain somewhere, littered with tumbleweeds, beer bottles, rattlesnakes and rusting Model A's. Having been all over the state of Texas and visited many of them, I can assure you this is not the case. Very few ghost towns became that way overnight; most of these communities suffered long and agonizing demises, struggling to maintain viability while leaking population and relevance at the seams knowing that the end is inevitable. Many of them lived and died by the railroad (Sherwood), others were coal towns who fell to the mighty sword of Big Oil in the Twentieth Century (Thurber), and others were destroyed by nature (Indianola). Of all of these vanishing blips on the map that I have come across, very few of them have come anywhere near as close to effecting me in a manner as deeply and profoundly as the tiny Taylor County community of Putnam.

A typical railroad town, Putnam dates back to 1890 (back when it was known by the decidedly more badass name of "Catclaw"), with the arrival of the Texas and Pacific Railroad. It reached its peak in 1940 when just under 500 Putnamites (Putnamans?) called it home, but began to decline as the century wore on and though it remains incorporated as a city (a "city" in the same sense that Lady Gaga is an "artist"), by the 2000 Census the population had fallen to just 88, making it one of the least populous incorporated places in Texas. As fascinating as this may be (right?), it's what Putnam has that sets it apart more than what it does not have; most ghost towns I have visited are the skeletal remains of once prosperous communities. Putnam, however, is still dying.

 A short but tidy high street area faces IH-20 and is lined with shops, but the "city hall" and post office appear to be the only businesses still in business in Putnam.

This house was particularly poignant.

It had a doghouse....

....and was still littered with belongings. 

Note the hat on the floor in front of the chair. It isn't hard to picture an oilfield worker coming in from sixteen back breaking hours on a rig, throwing his hat to the floor and kicking back in his rocking chair.

It wasn't until I was standing in front of the small pink house that this struck me: Putnam was the first "ghost town" I had ever visited that had sidewalks. Most of these places are faded remnants of the distant past: old, obscure, lost. To see a place in full death rattle that possessed modern conveniences such as paved sidewalks was oddly moving.