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BREWSTER COUNTY, TEXAS
Tesnus, Texas
Information furnished by Grandma Yesiam <grandma@cmaaccess.com> August 2009 Thank you for your contribution. PTA
Tesnus is Sunset spelled backwards and was named for the magnificent sunsets there. I am one of the last few who lived in Tesnus in it's heyday. It is (was) 30 miles southeast of Marathon.
My mother was the postmistress. Patrons came up the steps to the front porch and she served her patrons through her bedroom window. Maxon and Haymond were the railroad towns on either side of Tesnus and those who lived in them, and the ranch foreman came to Tesnus to get their mail. Mother got lots of requests for last date of service cancellations. (Attached) The little tag was slid into a holder on the mailbag which was taken onto the train.
It was mostly a railroad town, in the middle of the Gage ranch. There was a siding for trains to meet or pass each other and it was a place for the chugga puffers to stop for water, coal, and salt. (There was ice in the refrigerator cars.) When we moved there in 1945 there were three railroad houses. The signal maintainer, the pumper and the telegraph operator. The ranch foreman's home was on the road to Marathon, less than a mile away. Between 1945 and 1954 another temporary set of homes was moved in for the rail maintainance gang who lived there for a while, and occasionally gang cars ( sort of travel homes in r.r. passenger cars) were left for weeks or months. I remember that there was a cook who lived in one and made meals for the single men who worked on the gang and lived in them.
History of Tesnus
TESNUS, TEXAS. Tesnus is a rail
siding on the Southern Pacific Railroad twenty-three miles southeast
of Marathon in eastern Brewster County. It was established when the
railroad was built through the area in 1882. The site included a
section house, residences for the families of the section foremen and
the water pumper, and several other buildings. It also served as a
shipping point for ranchers in the area.
The location was at one time
named Tabor and was apparently called that for quite some time by
local people. When Tabor applied for a post office in February 1912
there was a conflict of names with Tabor in Brazos County. The name
Sunset was selected in allusion to the Sunset Limited symbol of the
Southern Pacific, but a post office by that name already existed in
Montague County. Finally the name Tesnus was contrived, which is
Sunset spelled backwards. Tesnus had twenty people in the 1940s and
1950s. The post office closed in 1955. Although none of the earlier
structures remain, Tesnus still serves as a siding for the Southern Pacific.
TXGenWeb Project USGenWeb Project
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