Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Celeste, TX

Celeste is a city in northwest Hunt County, Texas, on U.S. Highway 69 about ten miles northwest of Greenville and two miles southeast of the headwaters of the Sabine River.

Celeste was platted in 1886 by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway on open prairie and was named for the wife of a Santa Fe railroad official.

Celeste was incorporated in 1900, and cotton built its boom years: by 1914 it had two banks, three cotton gins, a waterworks, an ice factory, a weekly newspaper, and some thirty-five other businesses.

Celeste's population peaked at 1,022 in 1926 before the farm economy faded, and the city counted 809 residents at the 2020 census, nearly unchanged from 814 in 2010.

In the 2010 census, Celeste's 814 residents lived in 294 households.

World War II hero Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of the war, once lived in Celeste and attended school there through the eighth grade; he was born on a tenant farm about four and a half miles south of town near Kingston.

Opera baritone Mack Harrell, who went on to study at the Juilliard School and perform with leading American orchestras, was born in Celeste on October 8, 1909.

The First Baptist Church of Celeste was organized by four charter members in 1887, the same year the town was platted by the Santa Fe Railroad.

Celeste is served by the Celeste Independent School District, whose high school has anchored the town since its early graded-school days, when Celeste's schools together enrolled about 500 students in the 1920s.