Maypearl, TX

Maypearl is an Ellis County city on Farm Road 66, about ten miles southwest of Waxahachie. The 2020 census counted 1,034 residents. The settlement began as Eyrie, with a post office from 1894 to 1903, and took the name Maypearl after the International-Great Northern Railroad reached the area. The name honored the daughters of two railroad officials. Maypearl incorporated in 1910, and by 1914 the town had banks, a weekly newspaper, churches, and twenty-five businesses serving the surrounding farms.

The railroad's arrival gave Maypearl a real town center rather than only a crossroads sign. The business district shrank during the middle decades of the twentieth century, then the population began rising again as Ellis County grew into the Dallas-Fort Worth orbit. Maypearl Independent School District keeps the school map local, with the Panthers as the town's familiar team name. Waxahachie is the county seat and the nearest larger service center, but Maypearl still has its own grid, city government, and downtown routines. It is a North Texas town with a name borrowed from a railroad family, a prairie school district, and a business center that has outlasted several changes in the surrounding county.