Rowena: Where the Santa Fe Put Down Roots

Rowena sits in Runnels County in the heart of central Texas, and its story begins with the railroad. The Santa Fe line established a section house here in eighteen eighty-eight, a maintenance outpost along the route, but when the community applied for a post office, the name Rowena Station was rejected because it too closely resembled Ravenna, in Fannin County, and the postal service feared confusion.

The town itself was platted in eighteen ninety-eight by Paul J. Baron, who laid out the streets and lots that would attract the German and Czech farming families settling this part of the Rolling Plains. Agriculture, particularly cotton and grain farming, anchored the community through the early twentieth century. Small railroad towns like Rowena once dotted the Texas landscape every few miles, each one a service point for the farms that fed the nation.