Flat Top Settlement was a frontier center of traffic and communications. The first known settler, Richard Coffey, lived here in the 1860s, except during weeks when pioneers banded together in Pickettville Fort northwest of here for protection against Indians. This was on the Wire Road, so named because it followed a telegraph line operated by the U.S. Army Signal Corps between Fort Concho and Fort Belknap in the 1870s. Also in the 1870s, Flat Top was a change station on the Fort Concho-Brownwood stage route. The settlement took its name from a flat-roof stone building that stood here in the early days.