Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Lamkin, TX

Lamkin is a small unincorporated community on State Highway 36 in southeastern Comanche County, Texas, about twenty-four miles southeast of the city of Comanche.

Lamkin was originally established in 1870 on the banks of the Leon River and was named for George Lamkin, who donated the land for the townsite.

Lamkin had a post office by 1884, and by 1890 its twenty-five residents were served by a general store.

A flood on the Leon River destroyed old Lamkin in 1908, so the entire town moved half a mile north to its present site; when the Cotton Belt Railroad arrived around 1910, Lamkin grew into a shipping center for area farmers and ranchers.

By 1920 Lamkin was thriving, with two cotton gins, a hotel, a bank, a lumberyard, three general stores, four churches, a drugstore and a consolidated school whose basketball team won the county championship four years in a row.

A fire in 1922 destroyed most of Lamkin's businesses, and the town never fully recovered; after the railroad was discontinued in 1936, Lamkin faded from a 1929 peak of about 300 people.

Lamkin's population stabilized at about eighty-eight residents from the 1970s through 2000, a fraction of its railroad-era size.

A Texas historical marker erected in 1967 at Lamkin's south city limits still recounts the town's floods, fires and its annual horse and mule show.