Eden: Named for a Ranchman, Not a Garden

The name Eden, Texas, conjures Biblical imagery, but the real story is more practical. The town is named for Frederick Ede, an English-born pioneer ranchman who moved to Concho County around eighteen eighty-one, designated forty acres of his land as a townsite in February eighteen eighty-two, and donated the town square. When the post office opened in eighteen eighty-three, postal clerks adapted his surname into Eden, which stuck.

The first school opened in eighteen eighty-four and eighty-five. By the nineteen twenties Eden had become a trading center for wool and mohair as sheep ranching expanded across Concho County. The coincidence of the name and the green Hill Country landscape visible just south of here has prompted more than a few travelers on US Eighty-Three to slow down and take a second look.