In 1937, Dorothea Lange, the photographer behind the iconic Migrant Mother image, traveled to Carey, Texas, a small community about eight miles northwest of Childress along U.S. Highway 287. She wasn’t there for scenery. Mechanized cotton farming was displacing tenant families, and tractors were making it impossible for many rural Texans to make a living. Lange photographed an abandoned cafe and an empty house, images her own captions described as a town rapidly becoming a ghost town.

But Carey, originally named Talulah, refused to disappear. Lange returned in 1938 and photographed postmaster O.O. Mills, a sign the community was still functioning. By 1940, the town still had a school, a cotton gin, three churches, a general store, and a post office. The population hovered around 57 in 1980 and roughly 60 in 1990 and 2000, a stubborn little number that says plenty about the people who stayed.

Today, Lange’s photographs and captions are preserved by the Library of Congress, serving as a record of how technology reshaped rural Texas almost a century ago. The story of Carey echoes in small towns across the state still wrestling with growth, decline, and what it means to hold on. What’s the smallest Texas town you’ve ever visited, and what do you remember about it?