It’s Itasca

Left to Right: Lina & Sol Smith, Hige & Fleda Smith -1948

When I was very young my grandmother, Fleda Starr Smith, talked about having friends a long way away in the big city of Itasca. Vince says he remembers going there to see them, but he doesn’t remember who they were or where they lived. He’d not been back since, and I’d never been, so we were off on the road to Itasca. This small town, at head of Richland Creek, is on a natural watershed that divides the Brazos River and Trinity River basins. It is named after Lake Itasca, at the head of the Mississippi River in Minnesota. Railroads played an important part in the creation of the town when a station for the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad was needed in 1881; four years later, Itasca was incorporated.