Lake Victor, Texas

While driving from Lake LBJ to Stillhouse Hollow Lake for a race this year, I noticed this sign about 8 miles from Burnet on Hwy 963. Since I'm always looking for another lake to go sailing on, I put this on my "to do" list, to go check out Lake Victor. Yesterday Jody stopped by on his Honda Magna, so I asked him if he wanted to go check out Lake Victor. I fired up the Silverwing, and we left in 50 degree but sunny weather. Taking 2340 from 963, we rode the 5 miles to Lake Victor through ranch land. There were a few fields growing crops too. We stopped at the Lake Victor Baptist Church, the largest building in town. Looking around we saw a street sign for "Lake Ave" going south, and county road 205 went north.

We looked around the church, it has interesting stained glass windows, and Jody took this pic of me at the sign, so you'll know what time to be there for services and sunday school. We rode up county road 205 but just found more ranches. So we came back to try Lake Ave. Maybe the lake was that way?

We found another building! The H-D Club, not sure what that stands for, but also a sign that this is where the 4H club meets. The 4H club volunteers to pick up the litter on the Highway that goes through town.

When we found this house, we knew we were getting closer to the water. Notice the nautical like rope fence.

Another clue was this nice boat sitting in a field! We saw 3 boats in Lake Victor, so we continued looking for the water.

Well, Lake Ave was the right street to take, we finally found the water! Lake Victor isn't a lake, it's a small town with 2 or 3 streets and maybe 20 houses. I would have asked someone why it's called Lake Victor, but we saw not a single human. No stores, no gas, no restaurant. But it was a nice ride, we continued on 2340 to Hwy 281 about 10 miles north of Burnet and cruised back home.

From Laura,

At one time it was a thriving farm community. They dug out a gravel pit and it filled with water...nice lake, but it dried up and never filled up again. I think they came up with the name, when the post office came to town. Lake, of course for the beautiful lake...and Victor was the name of the postmaster.
The railroad bypassed the town of Lake Victor and it slowly died out. My great grandparents lived there and had a farm. They were the Risingers. I was told they donated part of their farm land for the Pleasant Hill Cemetery further down 2340, in fact, a large group of the Risinger clan are buried there.
Laura A. Pharr

And from Doyle,

Sort of an all-year long April Fool's joke about a lake, isn't it? What I have read about Lake Victor is that in the early 1900's when the Houston & Texas Central Railroad built their Burnet to Lampasas line an actual shallow lake was formed due to excavations done for construction of the rail line. The "Victor" part of the name came from one of the rail line construction foremen. The "lake" soon either silted-up or eroded the excavated material that formed it and Lake Victor as a lake was soon just a memory. Apparently the community had a small amount of commerce but the Post Office has long been gone and the rail line was abandoned in 1951. The old rail line embankment can still be seen running north and south on the east side of "town".

Probably more than you ever wanted to know about Lake Victor.

Doyle Rowntree