Fruitland, Texas

Fruitland is an unincorporated community in Montague County, Texas, United States. According to the Handbook of Texas, the community had a population of 20 in 2000.

History
Development of the community started in the early 1880s. For a short while, the community was known as Plano; in 1884, people changed the name to Woodswitch in honor of a wooden platform constructed by William H. Scarborough. The Fort Worth and Denver City Railway, which had extended its tracks to the area that same year, needed a structure to make it easier to load logs onto the cars. Fruit trees were then planted on the land that Scarborough had previously cleared in 10 acre sections, and the hamlet later changed its name to reflect this. Postal service started in 1892 under Fruitland, the town's new name. The town lived up to its reputation for the following twenty years. Frank Davis planted an apple orchard, along with other peach, pear, and berry fields, at Scarborough, making it one of the first fruit-raising hubs in North Texas. When Davis won first place for his apples in the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, his reputation was further strengthened, but there was no expansion of the town. Just about 150 people called it home by the middle of the 1920s, and during the Great Depression, both the population and crop production fell. The fruit harvest of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s was negatively impacted by insects as well as neglect brought on by a faltering economy. However, by the late 1950s, roadside fruit stalls on US Routes 81 and 287 close to Fruitland were making $6 million annually. Nevertheless, the community's postal service was discontinued in 1954. An estimated 100 persons inhabited Fruitland between 1945 and the late 1950s. After the 1960s, the population began to dwindle, and estimates from the middle of the 1970s to the year 2000 put the population at twenty.

Geography
Fruitland is located on Texas State Highway 101, 6 mi southeast of Bowie in south-central Montague County.

Education
Today, the community is served by the Bowie Independent School District.