Pendleton, TX

Pendleton is an unincorporated Bell County community and CDP northwest of Temple, with a post office and a very recognizable railroad past. The earlier settlement of Pendletonville grew around an Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe station in the 1880s, then took the shorter name Pendleton in 1908. At its peak the community had churches, a bank, three general stores, three cotton gins, and a school that served more than 150 pupils. The decline came slowly after the 1920s, leaving a small rural place inside the larger Killeen-Temple orbit.

Pendleton has an outsized cultural footnote: it is remembered as the birthplace of Blind Willie Johnson, the gospel-blues singer whose slide guitar recordings traveled far beyond Central Texas. Green Bay Packers safety Bobby Dillon also came from here, giving the community two very different claims to a wider audience. Farm Road 1237 and the post office still give the place a clear address, but the railroad town is mostly a story of what used to fill the streets. Pendleton feels like a rural crossroads with a surprising music-and-football roll call.