Amphion

AMPHION, TEXAS . Amphion is nine miles northwest of Pleasanton in west central Atascosa County, just east of Ranch Road 2146. The majority of settlers came to the site in the late 1880s. Some have claimed that Amphion was the first county seat. A Masonic lodge and a summer normal school were established in the town before 1900, and Amphion had a post office from 1881 to 1916. The origin of the name is not known. By 1887 Amphion had a general store and two cotton gins. The population was listed as 100 in 1896, when a hotel, church, and school had been added. In 1904 the Amphion school had seventy-two students and two teachers. The town declined in importance when the Artesian Belt Railroad bypassed it in favor of Jourdanton in 1909. The population remained at 100 in 1914, but the number of students in the school had declined to fifty-four, and the general store was the only business. In the 1940s Amphion had a school, a cemetery, and scattered dwellings, and by 1956 it was said to be a ghost town. In the late 1960s only the cemetery and a few structures remained at the site, which was designated a community on county maps in the 1980s. In 2000 the population was twenty-six.