A Sedalia Convention & Visitor’s Bureau Blog
By L.C. Melton
While I’m out west I’ll head down to Texas and regale you with that bit of Lone Star Sedaliana. Sedalia, Texas, it was established in 1887 and was about 50 miles North of Dallas, 30 miles from Plano on the Collin-Grayson County border. If Sedalia, Colorado was but a burp on the map, the Texas cousin is barely a whimper. And as for the name, the founders are known but not even the Texas state place names site bothers to trace a lineage.
This is M.K.T RR country though (a branch goes through nearby Van Alstyne to the West and another to the East) so we can assume one of the founders got the name from a timetable brochure or maybe even one of them came through the Missouri town and just liked the name.
J.W. McDougal built a cotton gin and Dave Martin a dry good store. A post office was established in 1889. Sedalia is barely on the map today but for the Sedalia Baptist Church. It still declares a population of 20 on the Farm to Market Road 3133 into Van Alstyne where the post office was relocated in the 1903.1
Sedalia, TX does have something in common with it’s Missouri namesake however…two devastating tornados swept through the community in August of 1912 and three people were killed by a May, 2006 twister that left little behind.
The Texas Sedalia isn’t a ghost town really as the buildings are gone and only the church remains as a reminder of the towns prior existence. So, a beautiful place name withers away on the Texas plains.1
1Minor, David; “Sedalia Texas” https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hns29
