Davenport Grocery
Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
DAVENPORT GROCERY RALL D. DAVENPORT (1902-1998), A NATIVE OF ARKANSAS, AND ORA L. DAVENPORT (1905-1997) MOVED TO WICHITA FALLS AROUND 1920 AND SETTLED IN THEIR HOME AT 3RD AND SEYMOUR STREET (NOW FARRIS STREET). RECOGNIZING THE NEED FOR A GROCERY STORE, THE DAVENPORTS DECIDED TO CONVERT THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE INTO A STORE IN 1926. AT THAT TIME, THE AREA WAS STILL IN THE OIL BOOM AND THE STORE SERVED OIL FIELD WORKERS AND RAILROAD EMPLOYEES. THE ORIGINAL HARDWOOD FLOORS REMAIN AS WELL AS THE ORIGINAL COUNTER AND AN EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD SOLID OAK MEAT-CUTTING BLOCK. FOR MANY DECADES, DAVENPORT GROCERY, HOME OF THE HOT LINKS, HAS SERVED THE COMMUNITY. THE DAVENPORT FAMILY CONTINUES TO OPERATE THIS THRIVING BUSINESS.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1926, at the height of the North Texas oil boom, Rall and Ora Davenport turned the front of their Wichita Falls home into a neighborhood grocery serving oil-field hands and railroad men. Generations later the store still stands, its original hardwood floors, counter, and decades-old oak butcher block intact, and it remains famous locally as the 'home of the hot links.'
Why it matters
A family grocery that has outlasted the boom that birthed it is a living reminder of the small enterprises that anchored working-class oil-patch communities across Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years after the First World War, North Texas was booming, and the boom smelled like oil. Strikes at Electra and Burkburnett had turned the country around Wichita Falls into a rush of derricks, pipelines, and men chasing wages out of the ground. Fortunes were made and lost in a season, and the towns swelled with workers who needed feeding.
Wichita Falls sat at the center of it, a rail town turned oil town, where the railroad brought in supplies and hauled out crude. It was the kind of place where a family arriving around 1920 would have found opportunity crackling in the air and housing and services struggling to keep up with the crowds.
Into that ferment came Rall and Ora Davenport, newcomers who settled into a home on a corner near the tracks. The decision they made a few years later, in the middle of the boom, was the sort of small, practical bet that built working neighborhoods across Texas.
People & events
Rall Davenport, born in Arkansas, and Ora had put down roots in Wichita Falls when they noticed something simple: the people around them needed a place to buy groceries. So in 1926 they did what enterprising families have always done — they opened the front rooms of their own house to the public and started selling.
Their customers were the men who made the boom run: oil-field hands coming off long shifts and railroad employees whose work kept the town connected to the wider world. A neighborhood store like theirs was more than a shop. It was a place to settle up on credit, to trade news, to be known by name.
What is remarkable is how much of that original store endured. The hardwood floors the Davenports first walked, the counter they stood behind, and a heavy oak block for cutting meat all remained in use for decades — and the store earned a local reputation for its hot links, the kind of specialty that turns a grocery into a landmark you drive across town for.
Its place in the American story
The story of the American 20th century is often told through big industry — steel, railroads, oil. But those industries ran on the backs of ordinary workers, and those workers were sustained by countless small businesses that never made a headline. The corner grocery was one of the quiet institutions that held a working-class community together.
Across the country, family stores like this one filled a role that large chains and distant suppliers could not: they extended credit to people they trusted, stocked what their particular neighborhood needed, and stayed open through good years and lean ones. When a boom collapsed, as booms always do, it was often these modest enterprises that kept a place alive.
That a home-front grocery could outlast the very oil rush that created its first customers says something about the durability of small, family-run American commerce — the kind of business that measures success not in quarters but in generations.
If you visit
You will find this spot in Wichita Falls near the corner of Third and the street once called Seymour, a plain residential-turned-commercial corner rather than a grand monument. Part of the pleasure is realizing that a working store grew out of somebody's living room, and that the line between home and business here was always thin.
Look for the things that carry the years: worn hardwood underfoot, a counter that generations of hands have leaned on, the kind of sturdy, well-used fixtures that a modern store would never bother to keep. These are the fingerprints of a family that stayed.
If you are planning a road trip through North Texas oil country, this makes a fine, human-scale counterpoint to the derricks and boom-town lore. Come hungry and curious, treat it as a neighborhood place rather than a tourist attraction, and let the corner tell you what daily life felt like when the wells were running.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Rall D. Davenport
- · Ora L. Davenport
Themes & tags
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