History of Chalmers, Texas: From Railway Stop to Ghost Town
Published: 1952
Updated: December 1, 1994
Chalmers was on State Highway 60 some five miles north of Bay City in northern Matagorda County. In the early 1900s the community was a stop on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway. A post office opened at the community in 1912, by which time Chalmers also reported a general store, a rice storehouse, and an estimated population of fifty. By 1914 the town had a telephone connection. Its post office closed in 1915, and local mail was dispatched to Bay City. In 1936 Chalmers comprised a school, a factory, one other business, and eight dwellings scattered around the junction of metal-surfaced and soil-surfaced roads. In 1940 Shell Oil was operating a refinery in the community, and the local school was still in operation. By 1949 the Chalmers school had been consolidated with the Bay City Independent School District, and by 1952 both the refinery and the school appear to have closed. In 1980 a few dwellings remained in the area along an unimproved dirt road. In 1989 the community was no longer shown on county road maps.
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Stephen L. Hardin, “Chalmers, TX,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/chalmers-tx.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
TID:
HRC44
- 1952
- December 1, 1994
