Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Barksdale, TX

Barksdale is an unincorporated community in southeastern Edwards County, Texas, located on the Nueces River at the intersection of Farm Road 335 and State Highway 55, about twenty-four miles southeast of the county seat, Rocksprings.

Barksdale is named for Lewis Barksdale, who patented a league and a labor of land in the area in 1847 and moved to the site of the community in 1869, after settlers had begun arriving in the 1860s.

In its early years the community was called Dixie, after nearby Camp Dixie, a Texas Ranger post on the military road to Fort Inge.

When residents applied for a post office in 1882 they were told the name Dixie was already taken by another Texas community, so they chose the name Barksdale instead — and the name Dixie disappeared from use.

By 1880 Dixie already had a saloon, a hotel, and a small store, and the Handbook of Texas records a population of twenty in 1884, two general stores and a grocery by 1890, and 106 residents by 1900, with a gristmill and a cotton gin built in the late 1880s.

Barksdale's first schoolhouse was erected in 1887 and doubled as a church; before that, classes had been held in a small house.

Barksdale's population held at an estimated 200 through the mid-1940s but fell to about seventy-one by 1973, when the town consisted of the high school, two businesses, several dwellings, and a cemetery.

Barksdale grew dramatically in the late 1980s as housing subdivisions were built there, reaching an estimated 617 inhabitants in 1990 and 1,081 by 2000, according to the Handbook of Texas.

Two Texas historical markers stand on State Highway 55 at Barksdale — the 1974 Dixie Settlement marker and the 1972 Pioneer Coalsons marker, which recalls an 1877 attack on Nick Coalson's goat camp in which his ten-year-old son was killed.

Barksdale is the headquarters of the Nueces Canyon Consolidated Independent School District, and Nueces Canyon Junior High/High School, serving grades 7–12, is located in Barksdale itself, while the district's elementary school is in neighboring Camp Wood.