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KEENAN, TEXAS. Keenan
is on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and Farm Road 2854, 10½
miles west of Conroe in western Montgomery County. It was established
about 1906 on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe line and named for W. S.
Keenan, passenger agent of the railroad. The community was a shipping
point for timber. In the early years the town had the Oualline sawmill,
four two-story buildings, a number of five-room houses, and a multipurpose
building that was used for a variety of community activities, including as
a church, a school, and a meetinghouse for the Woodmen of the World. In
1901 a post office was established to serve the more than 100 families
within a three-mile radius of Keenan. By 1915 Keenan had a telephone
connection; a railroad, express, and telegraph agent; F. A. Talley's
general store and gristmill; and a population of 150. By 1921 Talley had a
sawmill and commissary near the railroad depot. Around this time the post
office, which had been kept in private homes, was moved to the commissary
building. After the sawmill closed, possibly in the early 1930s, the
population of Keenan declined. In the 1940s Keenan had a station on the
Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe, a church and cemetery, several scattered
dwellings, a store, and a population of twenty. No reliable population
statistics are available for the community after 1967. According to local
sources, Keenan residents worked at the mill in Cowl Spur Mill until it
shut down sometime in the late 1950s. In 1990 the town was on the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and had a few scattered dwellings, two
cemeteries, and Spring Tabernacle Baptist Church. The railroad depot was
gone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Montgomery County Genealogical Society, Montgomery County History
(Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Hunter, 1981).
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