Geneva, Texas, a ghost town under Lake Livingston in Polk County. (original) (raw)

History in a Pecan Shell

Geneva was a steamboat port on the Trinity River. Established in the 1830s, by the end of that decade it had its own post office.

The community consisted of about 12 buildings in the mid 1840s. Original settlers had been on the San Jacinto County side of the river. The tiny community peaked in the mid 1840s with little more than a dozen residences. A post office operated (on the Polk County side of the river) from 1879 to 1882.

Geneva became a ghost town and sat for decades until the site was flooded with the construction of Lake Livingston in the 1980s.

Geneva, Texas

by d.knape

Geneva seems a fancy word
to call a town that's been submerged,
the town resisted while it could
but for a dam, it's gone for good

The little town we can assume
enjoyed itself until its doom,
it shoulda moved, but there it stood
now I'll be damned, it's gone for good.

©

d.knape
October 21, 2014

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