By Brynna Williamson
Every once in a while, you’ll run across something special. Something interesting. Something that captures your attention and makes you really think about a time gone by.
The lost community of Gunter is like that.
According to a concise history of Gunter, which was compiled by Dana Donahue of Lake Fork Marina, the lost community is “located near the Lake Fork Reservoir on Farm to Market Road 17, some five miles north of Alba in northwestern Wood County.”
According to Donahue, who has spent a long time researching the history of Gunter, the exact locations and history are difficult to pinpoint, as there is an existing city of Gunter in Texas (no relation), and the Gunter Community in Wood County has since died out.
“I think (the history) is interesting. I’ve hated that there’s not a little more information out there,” Donahue said. “I know people have information, but there’s just so little, since it’s not still here.”
However, while many details are still in obscurity, some things are definite about this now-lost community.
Isaac Hunter
Isaac “Ike” Gunter founded and settled the Gunter community in the late 1800s or early 1900s. A few of the other settlers were Morrow, Bennet, Culverhouse, Baker, and Newton, among others. According to Donahue, many of the descendants of these original settlers are “still in the area.”
In the late 1800s, Ike, who had a large amount of land and cattle, established a creekside camp in the area to furnish ties for the incoming railroad—the same railroad that would change the future of Wood County forever.
According to The Portal to Texas History, Ike also founded a grocery store in Alba. In addition to founding the town and the grocery store, he also followed other pursuits with his brothers and cousins. This is just one of many ways in which Wood County’s origins are closely connected.
“The families are all still here, but when the school consolidated to Alba, that makes people do the school stuff at Alba. And then, the church over here operated until about five or six years ago, but it had gotten down to a bunch of little old people. Like, five or six couples. And they couldn’t afford to keep it up, so they went in with the Cottonwood Church,” Donahue said.
By 1905, “the one-teacher Gunter School had 25 students.” By 1932, the school had 75 students. Just a few years later in 1936, the community built a church, the Gunter Assembly of God. The church and the school served Gunter for many years, but, as Donahue mentioned, the school ultimately merged with the Alba school in 1949, more than 45 years after it was founded.
It is not known what happened to many of the physical buildings that used to make up this small but thriving community.
Preserving History
While the church no longer functions as a worship venue, the rebuilt Assembly of God is still standing. Donahue and her husband, Ken bought the church in 2022 and turned it into an event venue. To them, this was not a simple real estate move, but a way to save a valuable historic and Christian property.
“We named it ‘Gunter Oaks Lodge & Venue.’ And we kept the name ‘Gunter,’ because that building is the only thing left of the whole community of Gunter,” Donahue said. “We didn’t want to take that history away, because it’s part of our little area around here. We tried to keep as much of it the same as we could.”
Donahue said that the community members in the area, many of whom are descendants of Gunter’s original settlers and who attended the church before it closed, have been very grateful to see the building used for something rather than letting it sit abandoned.
“Some of the families that are still around, they have just been heartsick that their church—where they grew up, got married, got baptized, and all that—has just been sitting there deteriorating,” she said. “And I’m sure they didn’t quite know what was going to happen (with the building). But when we did our open house, a bunch of those old church families came. And some of them even cried. They were so proud. And they just said, ‘Thank you so much for keeping the Gunter name.’”
Who Remains?
Today, the only living member of Gunter is Arlon Ragsdale, who was just a “little tiny kid” when the community merged with surrounding cities and disappeared. Ragsdale attended the Gunter Assembly of God before it merged with the Cottonwood Assembly of God near Alba. Interestingly, he later pastored the church after it was rebuilt in the 1970s. He is pictured 7th from left in the main photo above, circa 1930s.
The beautiful and peaceful Gunter Oaks Lodge and Venue can be rented out either as a lodge or as a venue. Please visit the website at https://www.facebook.com/LakeForkMarina.