Vigo Park

VIGO PARK, TEXAS . Vigo Park, on Farm Road 146 between Palo Duro and Tule canyons near the eastern border of Swisher County, was the result of a real estate venture in the early 1900s. In 1906 the Indiana-Texas Land Company, with headquarters in Terre Haute, Indiana, purchased 4,420 acres of land belonging to the JA Ranch and laid out a townsite. Company ads soon attracted many prospective homesteaders, who named the settlement after Vigo and Parke counties in Indiana. A post office, originally named Vio, was established in 1907. Its name was changed to Vigo Park in 1908, when the settlement had a combination general store and hotel, a blacksmith shop, and a church. A school opened in 1918. For a time the community also had a resident doctor. Irrigation wells and other farming innovations enabled Vigo Park residents to wrest a successful living from the soil. Livestock raising in the vicinity increased with the establishment of a feedlot in 1925. In 1940 the community recorded a population of forty. Though Vigo Park was never on a railroad as its founders had hoped, it remained an active rural community with two churches, a community center, a brick schoolhouse, and five businesses. The school closed in 1947. By the 1980s brick houses had replaced most of the earlier wooden ones. In 1984 through 2000 Vigo Park reported a population of thirty-one. Residents restored the old Vigo Park school building, and it served as a community center.