Former Townsite of Concord
Loeb, Hardin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First town in Hardin County. Established in 1858 at a strategic crossing from Beaumont to points north. Original name was Benton. Rapidly became a thriving steamboat port and reached a population of about 300, but declined in the 1880s with coming of the railroad.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1858 as Benton, this was the first town in Hardin County, planted at a strategic river crossing on the route from Beaumont to points north. It grew rapidly into a busy steamboat port of some 300 people, its fortunes riding on the traffic of the waterways. When the railroads arrived in the 1880s, they bypassed the old port and drew commerce elsewhere, and Concord dwindled away. Today only the townsite remains to mark where a thriving river landing once stood.
Why it matters
Concord's rise and fall captures the transportation revolution that made and unmade countless nineteenth-century towns, as railroads eclipsed the rivers that first carried commerce. Its vanished streets are a classic example of a Texas ghost town left behind by changing routes of trade.
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Nearby & related markers
David Choate Jr.
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Born in Louisiana in 1811, David Choate Jr. joined a company of Beaumont volunteers and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, earning land bounties that he settled along Pine Island Bayou. There in 1856 he founded Concord, a steamboat shipping point whose busy ferry linked Beaumont to points north and drew farm goods and lumber from three counties. At its peak Concord held 300 residents—but when railroads reached the region, the steamboats fell silent and the town was abandoned by 1880.
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