RACETRACK, TEXAS. Racetrack is a small farming community just east of Doctors Creek at the intersection of Farm roads 1530 and 1533, four miles southeast of Pecan Gap in western Delta County. The settlement developed early in the 1880s around a prairie racetrack, where horses ran on Sunday afternoons. The post office opened in 1888 with Louisa Jane Compton as postmaster. Mail arrived daily from Paris or Cooper, and the only business was the Lancing and McCollum General Store. In 1890 no businesses were reported there, and by 1904 the post office had been discontinued. By around 1904 a school had opened, however, and enrolled thirty-six white students under one teacher. In 1936 the community consisted of a school, a church, and a small cluster of dwellings at the intersection of two dirt roads. The school had closed by 1964, when Racetrack comprised a few scattered farms on Farm Road 1530 and a dirt thoroughfare. In 1970 local children attended classes within the Cooper Independent School District. Racetrack was still shown on the 1984 county highway map.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John J. Germann and Myron Janzen, Texas Post Offices by County (1986). Paul Garland Hervey, A History of Education in Delta County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1951). Wilma Ross and Billie Phillips, Photos and Tales of Delta County (1976).

Vista K. McCroskey