Mecca

MECCA, TEXAS . Mecca is on Farm Road 978 ten miles west of Madisonville in northwestern Madison County. It was founded about 1850 in what was then northern Grimes County and is one of the oldest settlements in Madison County. In 1894 a post office was established there, and in 1896 the town had a general store, a two-teacher school with an enrollment of thirty-four, and an estimated population of thirty. The post office was discontinued in 1907 and was replaced by mail delivery over a rural route from Normangee. The first telephone in the community was installed at the general store in 1912. During the early 1900s the town had a drugstore, a barbershop, a millinery shop, a blacksmith shop, two cotton gins, and a gristmill. Its population was an estimated fifty in 1933. In 1935 the local three-room schoolhouse held classes with three teachers and thirty-seven white pupils; at that time most of the thirty-seven black pupils in the Mecca school district attended Chapel Hill School, three miles southeast. During the early 1940s the Mecca School was consolidated with the North Zulch Independent School District. Deceased Mecca residents were interred in cemeteries in neighboring townships such as Tenmile and Rock Prairie. In 1948 the community population was still estimated at fifty, served by one business. During the early 1990s the largest local employer was the Knight Quarter Horse Ranch. The town reported a population of forty-eight in 2000.