Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Talco, TX

Talco is a city in northwestern Titus County, Texas, on U.S. Highway 271 about sixteen miles northwest of Mount Pleasant, the county seat.

Post offices named Gouldsboro (established in 1856) and Goolesboro (established in 1878) served the area before the town took the name Talco, derived from the initials of the Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana Candy Company seen on a candy wrapper.

In 1912, Talco relocated to be closer to a railroad line, and by 1914 it had a bank, several stores, a telephone company, and an estimated population of 300.

Everything changed in February 1936, when oil was discovered in the Talco oilfield and the small farming community was transformed into an oil boomtown whose population was estimated at nearly 2,000 in the late 1930s.

Because Talco's crude oil was of low gravity and thus less valuable as fuel, it proved ideal for producing asphalt, and Talco billed itself as the "asphalt capital of the world."

Geologists initially predicted the Talco field held about 160 million barrels of oil, but by the end of 1984 cumulative production had passed 266 million barrels and the field was still in production.

The 1940 census counted 912 Talco residents after the first boom faded, and the population has declined slowly since, reaching 494 at the 2020 census.

In 2000, the census counted 570 people living in 220 households in Talco.

Talco students attend the Rivercrest Independent School District, created in 1965 as the Talco-Bogata Consolidated Independent School District and renamed Rivercrest in 1999, and the district's earlier Talco school building opened in 1939 during the oil-boom years.