Editing Imperial, Texas (section)

==History==
The community was settled in the early 1900s. The site was originally known as Redlands from 1908 to around 1910, when it was renamed after [[California]]'s [[Imperial Valley (California)|Imperial Valley]].<ref name="Texas Handbook">{{cite web | url = https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hli01 | title = Imperial, Texas | publisher = [[The Handbook of Texas]] online | date = | accessdate = 2009-06-23}}</ref>  A post office and school were opened in 1910 and a townsite was laid out on land owned by Benjamin E. Bush one year later. Water from the [[Pecos River]] was diverted and a small dam was built west of the community.<ref name="Texas Escapes"/> An irrigation canal was constructed through Imperial in an attempt to attract new residents, but the area's water had a high salt content, which made farming unproductive. The population was approximately 25 in the mid-1920s, but had increased tenfold by 1949.<ref name="Texas Escapes"/> Imperial's population approached 1,000 by the late 1960s with twenty-six businesses operating in the community. The number of inhabitants continued to decline during the latter half of the twentieth century.<ref name="Texas Handbook"/>