Roosevelt, Texas: Named After a Charge Up a Hill

The timing here is almost too neat. W. B.

Wagoner founded a new West Texas settlement with a post office in eighteen ninety-eight, just weeks after Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba and became front-page news across the country. The postal service named the settlement Roosevelt, and the choice stuck. The community grew into a supply hub for sheep and goat ranchers, and by the nineteen twenties it had become known for something unexpected: polo ponies.

Ranchers bred horses for the cavalry and for the national polo market, and Roosevelt hosted polo matches in the middle of the Hill Country. The town never grew large, holding around a hundred residents for decades, a small place with a very well-timed name.