Aledo, Texas

When the Texas and Pacific Railroad laid tracks through eastern Parker County in eighteen seventy-nine, a settlement grew up around a coal and water stop west of Fort Worth. It was called Parker Station. The name caused persistent confusion, with mail meant for Parker County getting dumped off here. So in eighteen eighty-two, the post office required a new name, and railroad officials chose Aledo, after Aledo, Illinois, hometown of one of their own.

By the mid-eighteen eighties Aledo had around a hundred and fifty residents, a steam cotton gin, a corn mill, and a bank. It remained a modest agricultural shipping point for decades. Incorporation finally came in nineteen sixty-three. Today Aledo is one of the faster-growing communities in the Fort Worth metro, its main streets lined with newcomers who probably have no idea the town is named for a small city in western Illinois because the postal service had a sorting problem.