Ghost Town of Cotton Gin
Teague, Freestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Settled prior to 1848, when Dr. J. S. Wills established a mule-drawn gin here. Post office was founded in 1851, the year county was organized. Dr. Wills gave a block of land for courthouse, but voters declined to make Cotton Gin the county seat. Town had 3 churches, a good school, a newspaper, a Masonic Lodge, stores and saloons. In the 1870's when Houston & Texas Central Railroad built a few miles to the west, business interests left here. Cotton Gin illustrates fate of hundreds of early Texas towns by-passed by railroads, highways and industry. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settled before 1848, Cotton Gin took its name from the mule-drawn gin Dr. J. S. Wills built here, and it gained a post office in 1851 as Freestone County organized. Though Wills offered land for a courthouse, voters declined to make it the county seat, and the thriving town — with three churches, a school, a newspaper, and a Masonic Lodge — faded in the 1870s when the Houston & Texas Central Railroad laid its tracks a few miles west. Its businesses drifted toward the rails, leaving Cotton Gin a ghost town.
Why it matters
Cotton Gin is a textbook case of the hundreds of Texas towns whose fate was sealed not by drought or disaster but by the route of a railroad line.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Dr. J. S. Wills
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Springfield
Mexia, TX
Founded in 1838 around a spring donated by Moses Herrin, Old Springfield grew into the seat of newly formed Limestone County by 1846, complete with a two-story brick courthouse, a Methodist district that seeded the Northwest Texas Conference, and a short-lived college. The town's fortunes turned when the Houston & Texas Central Railroad passed it by in 1870, and two devastating fires in 1873 — one consuming the courthouse — hastened its end as buildings were carted off and the county seat moved to Groesbeck. Today only the old cemetery and Springfield Lake, inside Fort Parker State Park, carry the name of what was once the county's leading town.
Cade Cemetery
Streetman, TX
The Cade community sprang up in the 1870s across the farmland where Navarro and Freestone counties meet, named for early resident Cade Hayes. Its cemetery opened in 1876 and the settlers built a church and Masonic hall on land deeded by the Coleman family. When a rail line bypassed the area in the early 1900s, Cade faded, but local women revived and still tend the burial ground.
Pisgah Ridge
Richland, TX
Pisgah Ridge, a limestone outcropping named for the biblical Mount Pisgah, long drew people to its caves, creeks, and game. In 1830 Cherokees reportedly burned a village here that had been shared by Tonkawa and Tawakoni people, and within a few years settlers of European descent arrived, building a stagecoach inn and small communities along the Springfield Road. The area gained a rough reputation from a family feud and its links to outlaw John Wesley Hardin before the railroad bypassed it in the 1870s and drew residents away.
Armour Cemetery
Coolidge, TX
Established in 1878 on land deeded by community founder James Armour—a Georgia-born Civil War veteran—this cemetery served the settlement that grew into the town of Sandy Creek, later called Armour. By 1884 the community had churches, a school, and gristmills, but it declined swiftly after 1903 when the railroad founded nearby Coolidge and businesses moved away. Divided into distinct sections, including a Norwegian and a Catholic "Mexican" cemetery, it is the last remaining trace of the vanished community.