IMPACT

A short history of Impact

The area that became known as Impact began as a 20-acre (8 ha) poultry farm owned by advertising businessman Dallas Perkins. Prior to 1960, liquor sales were prohibited in all cities and counties surrounding Abilene. The prohibition of legal liquor sales encouraged bootleggers to produce illegal liquor commonly called "moonshine".

Perkins capitalized on the potential market for legal liquor among the wets by purchasing 27 acres of land adjacent to his farm on the outskirts of Abilene and then pushing for its incorporation. Calling the village "Impact" after his advertising business, 29 signatures of local residents were collected and it was incorporated in 1960.

Soon after, the village's citizens voted 18 to 2 to permit liquor sales. Abilene lawyers immediately filed motions to oppose the town's incorporation, but a Texas Supreme Court ruling in 1963 upheld Impact's incorporation and its right to sell liquor.

Two liquor stores opened in Impact in 1963. The first month's sales were $463,000 (equivalent to roughly $3.5 million in 2012). With the newfound revenues, the village's roads were paved and lighted, garbage pickup was introduced, and a policeman was hired. One of the liquor stores was Pinky's, which was owned by Perkins and his associates and used a logo of a pink elephant, thus the name.

Impact remained the only wholly wet municipality in Taylor County until 1978, when Abilene voters narrowly legalized (by a 131-vote margin) liquor sales in the city. With that vote, Impact lost its reason for being. The liquor stores in Impact soon dried up and closed and the community became just another suburb of Abilene.

Impact has been and still is one of the smallest incorporated communities in Texas. Its population peaked at 61 in 1970 and had declined to 39 by 2000.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Impact, Texas, revision 1381414228 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.