Poorest town in Texas - Below freezing weather in Abilene,Texas 

Cool old towns! I wonder what kind of scoop the person at the post office could give you about the history of the area?

The thing you said used to be a gas station was good ol twins deli

LA means Lueders Avoca we basically combined towns our middle and elementary school are in Lueders while the high school is in avoca

At the turn of the century, this little burg was up and coming. A branch railroad line, Texas Central, had made its way to town, after a state of the art (then) bridge was constructed over the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, This was a major achievement and opened up the territory to "settlers." My ancestors were some of those who ventured here for various reasons. For 20 something years the town grew, prospered and served a purpose for many farmers and some ranchers then. Transportation wasn't what it is today. Folks needed a place to buy supplies, farmers needed their implements repaired etc. Lueders provided many of those needs. Frankly it never was a "silk purse" ..It remained a borderline sow's ear kinda place. When the Depression hit, of course it suffered economically. WW2 brought an economic upturn. By that time Lueders had an oil refinery that produced fuel for the war effort. The limestone industry has always been a part of Lueders and was up and running. After the War was over the town realized an increase in population. The late 1940's and very early 1950's were the heydays. Business was good. THEN came the 1950's drought and that was the catalyst that began a decline that has brought us to now. My dad had a Dry-goods Store which did ok until this drought and then it nose dived to failure. Another factor that contributed to economic decline was the improvement of automobiles...and the building of reliable roads to the larger town, Abilene. Abilene provided better stores, lower prices and employment. My dad got a job at the new Radio/TV station there as an accountant. We moved to Abilene in 1965. From the early 1960's a graph would show a steady decline....and you see the result. I think you missed some of the better maintained houses (there are a few) and the School which is the best preserved building in town. However the town, former businesses ..are completely gone....Needs to be demolished but there are factors...both environmental and ownership factors that have prevented that. I appreciate your interest in Lueders. Most people speed up and pass it by as fast as they can. I still have emotional ties to this place, having grown up here.

Glad you made it safely

That town would be a great set for a movie or maybe it was.

Just to kind of give you a clue, the money in these tiny west Texas towns almost never reside inside the city. Go outside the city though, point at any pasture and look up the owner and you will probably find a family worth more than Tom Brady’s estate.

This place is actually two towns that kinda combined into one, thats why people usually refer to it as Lueders-avoca and thats what the LA stands for, i graduated from avoca back in 2020 and yes it most definitely is poor and run down but the people there are typically friendly and pretty chill

Hahahahah my husband is from lueders so this was awesome to watch. Nice to see an outside perspective

We ran out of gas there back in 2001 at like 3 in the morning… we walked around the town for hours thinking what we could do… finally we ran in a random houses yard and stole their gas tank and used it to get back to Abilene 😂

Did you enjoy your visit?

My God Lou,got to insulate your pipes,some how🤔sorry about that,weird weather man🥶

been thru here many times for work. What happens when the interstates came to Texas.

HEY ITS NOT ABANDONED EVEN THOUGH THE HOUSES ARE RUN DOWN AND FILLED WITH DRUGGIES ITS A NICE LITTLE TOWN I LOVE MY LUEDERS