History of Ada, Texas: From Railroad Dreams to Deserted Community
By: Monica Smith and Rachel Piñeda
Published: 1952
Updated: November 1, 1994
Ada was on Farm Road 1809 east of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and north of Lake Trammell; the site is eight miles southwest of Sweetwater in central Nolan County. In 1897 Irving Wheatcroft, a railroad promoter, persuaded the citizens of Sweetwater to finance the construction of the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway to link up Sweetwater with other lines to the south. The railroad was soon built to a point eight miles southwest of Sweetwater, and the new community laid out at that site was called Ada, after Wheatcroft's stenographer, Ada Cooper. The building of the railroad was delayed by financial difficulties, and the community developed slowly. In 1900 the owners of the railroad removed the rails and used them for another project, and when the railroad was eventually built later in the decade it was laid out to the west of Ada. Ada Common School was built in 1899, and by 1904 it had one teacher and twenty-two pupils. In 1914 Lake Trammell was built to south of the community. By 1940, when the site was identified on maps as both Ada School and, a little to the west, Lake Trammell, it had the school and scattered dwellings. The school was consolidated with the Sweetwater schools in 1941, and the site was deserted by the 1980s.
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Monica Smith and Rachel Piñeda, “Ada, TX (Nolan County),” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/ada-tx-nolan-county.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
TID:
HRA06
- 1952
- November 1, 1994
