Merkel, Texas

Before it had a name, the spot had a nickname: Windmill Town. When the Texas and Pacific Railway reached this stretch of Taylor County in eighteen eighty-one, the surrounding flatland already had a windmill pumping water for the ranch operations that dominated the area. The first settler to put down roots at the new station was a man named S. M. Merkel, and when the town took shape, it took his name.

The post office opened in June of eighteen eighty-three with the railroad agent serving as postmaster. By eighteen eighty-five there were twenty-five residents. By eighteen ninety there were roughly three hundred fifty people, with four churches, a school, cotton gins, and grain facilities. The town incorporated in nineteen oh six. Merkel sits seventeen miles west of Abilene today, still an agricultural community on the edge of the Permian Basin, the windmill long replaced but the landscape not much changed.