Forreston 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 Ellis County

Ellis County, Texas

As of the census of 2000, there were 111,360 people, 37,020 households, and 29,653 families residing in the county. The population density was 118 people per square mile . There were 39,071 housing units at an average density of 42 per square mile...

, 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...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It lies on U.S. Route 77

U.S. Route 77

U.S. Route 77 is a north–south United States highway. It is unsigned in and around Dallas, Texas. Its historic segment through South Dakota and Minnesota was decommissioned with the advent of Interstate 29 but otherwise the route has been spared the decommissioning that has shortened other US...

 eight miles south of Waxahachie

Waxahachie, Texas

Waxahachie is a city in Ellis County, Texas, United States, and a southern suburb of Dallas. The population was 21,426 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Ellis County....

. The population was estimated to be 238 in 2008.

History

The roots of Forreston date back to 1843, when the area was known as Howe's Settlement, after an early settler to the region. In the mid to late 1840s, the community was re-named Chambers Creek and received its first post office in 1846. It initially served as the original county seat of Navarro County until 1850, when the organization of Ellis County placed the town within the new county.

From the early 1850s to the late 1880s, Chambers Creek remained a small farming community, providing a school and a church for local residents and farmers. In 1890, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (KATY) Railroad was built through the area, and businesses began to spring up along the tracks. It was around this time that the community was renamed Forreston, after Carr Forrest, a local landowner who served as the town's first postmaster and donated the land on which the new rail depot was built. By the 1940s, Forreston had 3 cotton gins, several businesses, and a population of 350. Throughout the Twentieth century the town remained a shipping point for local farming and commerce.

The population began to decline by the 1980s, and by 2000 had dropped to its current level of approximately 200 residents.

Forreston gained notoriety by being featured in Texas Monthly's March 1999 "The Best of Small-Town Texas" issue & D Magazine's August 2007 "Shop Vintage with Ken Weber" thanks to Bon Ton Vintage, a shop founded in 1984 by retired jazz musicians Barbra and John Kauffman which proclaims itself as having the "largest collection of vintage clothing in Texas".