Comstock, Texas
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Comstock is a town located in Val Verde County, Texas. In 2000, the town had a population of approximately 375.
Comstock is about 30 miles northwest of Del Rio on U.S. 90. It is the town nearest to Seminole Canyon, which has been a site of human habitation for 9,000 years. Comstock itself was founded around 1883 on the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway as the line drove west toward El Paso. Although first platted as Sotol City, it was later named for John Comstock, a railroad dispatcher.
The town was located near a natural lake, which was used for the town's water supply but is today only intermittent. The town was granted a post office in 1888, but its remote location and limited resources kept the town from growing quickly. Comstock's biggest scene was between 1888 and 1910, when the Deaton Stage Line operated between the town's railroad depot and the city of Ozona some sixty miles north. The depot at Comstock did not long outlast the stagecoach line, and although the names on the businesses have changed little has changed in the town in 70 years.
Seminole Canyon, now a state park, has cave drawings and other evidence of settlement dating from the Early Archaic Period, around 7000 BC. Later remains include stone circles and cairns of the Late Prehistoric, and even 19th Century remains from the construction of the Southern Pacific, one of the nation's first transcontinental railroads.