History
Len L. Lewis, a horse trader and former Union Army officer, helped establish the community in the late 1870s or early 1880s. After marrying a local widow, Lewis purchased a half-section of land and proceeded with plans to build a town that he hoped would become a trade center for the region. Ed, Tom, and Robert Stevenson opened a store in 1881 and Lewis laid out a town site that included forty lots and a town square – he hoped that the town would eventually serve as the seat of government for a new county. When a post office was established in 1882, the site was named London.
The community continued to grow and by 1896, the population had grown to approximately 100. The number of residents reached an estimated 360 in 1930. The Great Depression caused a brief decline in London, but by 1943, the population had grown to 400. In the years after World War II, the community again suffered a decline in the number of people and businesses. The low point was reached in the early 1970s, when only around 110 people were living in the community. In the latter years of the twentieth century, the population rose to approximately 180.
The London Town Square was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1971, Marker number 2988.
Although London is unincorporated, it has a post office, with the ZIP code of 76854.
Read more about this topic: London, Texas
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)