Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Below: 3 old photos and papers, maps from 1968 on, and the census since 1890.
The Foreston post office opened in 1889, the earliest record of the town by name.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Foreston’s history is told.
From Wikipedia’s history of Foreston.
A post office called Foreston has been in operation since 1889. The city was named for the forests near the original town site.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Passages that mention Foreston, cut from the printed page as they were published.
on the I. & M. division of the C, M. & St. P. R. R., half way between Austin and Calmer. One mile north of it is the old town of the same name. Four miles northeast is Foreston, on the river already mentioned. Foreston is not far from the g-eograi)hical center of the settlement. With P'oreston as a centre, a circle drawn with a radius of twelve miles or so, would inclutle aliout all the Welsh families in this part of the countr}-.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
In the archiveForeston Hotel
On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological SurveyOne decade in the archive so far: the 1910s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Foreston. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Foreston.
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Foreston’s page.
Retake this view · +15Between 204 and 559 people in every census since 1890.
14 censuses, 1890–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Foreston’s Wikipedia page.
Nobody well known was born in Foreston itself, so here are the best known from just nearby.
Each neighbor’s History grade, on the same three inputs.
The Foreston post office opened in 1889, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From the Library of Congress (3), Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
1912
1912
