Bledsoe is an unincorporated community

Unincorporated area

In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality.To "incorporate" in this context means to form a municipal corporation, a city, town, or village with its own government. An unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a municipal government...

 in western Cochran County, Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, located near the New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

 border. It is about 68 miles west of Lubbock, Texas

Lubbock, Texas

Lubbock is a city in and the county seat of Lubbock County, Texas, United States. The city is located in the northwestern part of the state, a region known historically as the Llano Estacado, and the home of Texas Tech University and Lubbock Christian University...

. As of the 1990 US Census

United States Census, 1990

The Twenty-first United States Census, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States to be 248,709,873, an increase of 9.8 percent over the 226,545,805 persons enumerated during the 1980 Census....

, the town had a population of 125.

History

Bledsoe was founded in 1925 as the terminus of the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway

Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway

The Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway is a now-defunct railroad company that was a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.It was originally named the Southern Kansas Railway but in 1914 was renamed the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway....

, and named for Samuel T. Bledsoe

Samuel T. Bledsoe

Samuel T. Bledsoe was the sixteenth president of Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.- Early life and family :...

, the line's president. The town gained its original prosperity through its function as a cattle-shipping station, and reached its greatest population of 400 in 1930. The Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

had dire effect on the community and throughout the remainder of the 20th century the population continued to dwindle; the last recorded figure put the 1990 population at 125.