Bonus

Bonus, near the junction of Farm roads 102 and 2614, fifteen miles north of Wharton in northern Wharton County, was established in the mid-1890s, when the construction of the Cane Belt Railroad (chartered by William Thomas Eldridge , W. L. Dunovant, and others) terminated at the plantation site owned by Eldridge and Dunovant in Wharton County. An extension of this line ran to another plantation owned by Eldridge and Dunovant just a few miles south and west of Bonus. In 1896 the community applied to the postal department for a post office and requested the name Alamo, but that name was not approved. Reportedly the name Bonus was chosen instead because the railroad owners were promised a bonus for building a line into the area. The Bonus post office opened in 1896. Bonus initially had relatively few white residents. Little mail was received at the community, and its post office was discontinued three times before being permanently discontinued in 1940, when local mail was routed through Eagle Lake or Egypt.