Provident City, in the southern "panhandle" of Colorado County, once a town of 500 people is now a ghost town.  The town was founded in 1909, as a land promotion, and was named for the Provident Land Company of Kansas City, Missouri, the promoters and owners of much land in the area.  Now all that remains is a hotel, which is the headquarters of the Goldenrod Ranch, owned by the Hancock family of El Campo, and a tenant house or two for Hancock employees.

Long before Provident City came into existence, this area of Texas, where four counties came together, Lavaca, Wharton, Jackson and Colorado, was known as the Goldenrod Prairie.  There was a Goldenrod School in Colorado County near the Lavaca County line a few miles above the present location of Provident City.

From December 6, 1900, to February 1, 1910, there was a Goldenrod post office in Wharton County which was moved to Provident City.  Anderson R. Knight served as postmaster the whole time at Goldenrod and at Provident City until January 22, 1915.

By 1909 the Provident Land Company of Kansas City, Missouri, had bought up from fifteen and twenty thousand acres of land.  C.C. Chamberlain, assistant engineer, on the 12th day of December 1910 completed a map of Provident City.  Two sections of land were laid out in lots for the city, with five and ten acre plots surrounding the city area for fruit and vegetable farming.  This map was filed with the county clerk of Colorado County on December 31, 1910.

The Homefinder, a magazine type newspaper published monthly by The Provident Land Company of Kansas City, Missouri, and distributed in the middle west, was full of glowing testimonials about the healthful climate and rich soil, which it was not.

The newspaper was filled with photographs which were not all taken at Provident City, showing corn of great height, a pear orchard, a field of ripe cotton, onions, peanuts, sweet potatoes, lemons, oranges, figs, cabbage, tomatoes, alfalfa, sugar cane and much more -- most of which could not be grown on this soil.  They promised to build a railroad from Provident City to Glen Flora to connect with the Santa Fe.  The promised railroad never got beyond the roadbed stage.

The land company built a hotel in Ganado to house their clients who came to buy [property], mostly from the Northern states.  They took them in surreys out to see this prospective new city and showed them a railroad grade which had no beginning nor end, but which promised to eventually bring the railroad from Glen Flora to Provident City.  Traces of it can still be found.  Eventually a large two story hotel was built in Provident City.

During the peak of the four-year-life of the town, more than 500 families were living there.  Besides the elegant hotel mentioned above, the Provident State Bank, with a capital of $10,000 was chartered in December of 1909.  The following men were directors; T.B. Coleman, president; Chas. O. Fenner, cashier; R.J. Clark, Emil Reinhold, D.A. Peoples, A.R. Knight and Daniel Willett.  And by July of 1914, the bank was forced into liquidation with N.M. Craft in charge of disposing of the assets.

Besides the hotel and bank, during its peak years, the thriving city had the following establishments:

and a Methodist Church, which met upstairs above the grocery store.

Additionally, there was a Post Office with the following Postmasters:

There was also a School House with two rooms upstairs and two rooms downstairs with Misses Edna Barnes and Zou Urguhart as teachers.

The Provident City Commercial Club, along with other businesses, ordered a five hundred stock issue to start a canning factory, which succeeded, with E.A. Scott in charge, as prior mentioned.

Provident City W.O.W. Lodge

It was a gala day in the history of the Navidad Camp of the W.O.W. Lodge 2780, of Provident City, Texas, when an inauguration dinner was given for the members, their families, and friends on January 14, 1913.

The installation of officers resulted as follows:

In the July issue of 1913 Halletsville New Era, there was the following article: 

"Everybody that was financially able to leave (Provident City) has shook its dust from his or her feet, while the few that still remain are there only because they are as yet not able to get away.  Tar and feathers would be too good for the real estate sharks that were responsible for this wholesale robbery of poor fellows from Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and other states who bought this land 'sight unseen' on the flattering representations of the sharks aforesaid.  One victim told the writer only a few weeks ago that he had been 'roped in' by the land agents after seeing moving pictures of the wonderful Provident City country at a moving picture show in a Kansas town, the smooth agents having of course "doctored" these pictures and arranged with the proprietor to show them to the suckers.  In these pictures, by the way, there were great orange trees and groves, the building of the Provident City 'railway', etc."

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