Hagerman
Pottsboro, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1904 James Patillo (J. P.) Smith platted streets here in a 10-acre wheat field and established the town of Hagerman. Named for railroad attorney James P. Hagerman, the town consisted of 250 residents, a cotton gin, school, church, post office, railroad depot, and several businesses by 1910. The town prospered and grew to contain three churches and a three-teacher school. However, in the 1920s residents and businesses began to abandon the area when it became known that the creation of Lake Texoma would completely inundate the town. Lake Texoma was created in 1943. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1904 J. P. Smith laid out streets in a ten-acre wheat field and named the new town Hagerman for a railroad attorney. Within a few years it was a real place — 250 people, a cotton gin, school, church, depot, and shops, growing to three churches and a three-teacher school. Then the future arrived as a rising tide: word spread in the 1920s that the planned Lake Texoma would drown the town, residents drifted away, and the 1943 reservoir finished the job.
Why it matters
Hagerman is a classic American ghost town, a reminder that the same government engineering that brought water and power to the mid-century Southwest also erased whole communities from the map.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the turn of the twentieth century, North Texas was railroad country. Wherever tracks were laid, new towns seemed to spring up overnight. A depot meant farmers could ship their cotton and grain, and a town platted beside the tracks could grow from a field into a community in just a few years.
Grayson County, on the Red River along the Oklahoma border, was part of that boom. Cotton was king across much of Texas then, and a town's gin was often its economic heart, where the region's farm families brought their harvest each fall.
By the 1920s and 1930s a new force was reshaping the American landscape: large-scale river engineering. Floods on the Red River and other waterways pushed the federal government toward huge dams that promised flood control and hydroelectric power. Those same projects would put whole valleys, and the towns in them, under water.
People & events
In 1904, James Patillo Smith, known as J. P., looked at a ten-acre wheat field and saw a town. He platted streets across it and named the place Hagerman, after railroad attorney James P. Hagerman. That was a practical choice in an age when a town's future depended on the railroad.
The gamble paid off at first. By 1910 Hagerman had about 250 residents, a cotton gin, a school, a church, a post office, a railroad depot, and several businesses. It kept growing into a town with three churches and a three-teacher school, a sign of families who planned to stay and raise children there.
Then, in the 1920s, word spread that the planned Lake Texoma would flood the town completely. Rather than wait for the water, residents and businesses began leaving. Some moved their lives and livelihoods elsewhere years before the lake existed. Lake Texoma was created in 1943, and the town J. P. Smith drew in a wheat field disappeared beneath it.
Its place in the American story
Hagerman belongs to a large and often forgotten group of American towns: communities sacrificed for the big water projects of the twentieth century. Across the country, dams brought flood control, electricity, water supplies, and recreation to millions of people. The price was often paid by small towns that happened to sit in the wrong valley.
Lake Texoma, on the Texas–Oklahoma border, became one of the largest reservoirs in the country. For the region as a whole it brought real benefits. For the people of Hagerman it meant losing their homes, churches, and school, and the ties that made the place a community.
Towns like Hagerman raise a question Americans still argue about: how do we weigh progress for the many against losses for the few? The marker doesn't answer it. But it makes sure the people who paid that price aren't forgotten.
If you visit
The marker stands near Pottsboro, in lake country, not far from the water that covers the old townsite. Standing there, it's strange and a little moving to realize that a town of streets, churches, and a busy depot once stood somewhere under the calm surface nearby.
The town's name lives on at the lake. A national wildlife refuge on the shore carries the Hagerman name, and it's a lovely stop if you enjoy birds, quiet trails, and wide views over the water. It's a fitting memorial: the name survived even though the town didn't.
Lake Texoma makes a great road-trip base, with fishing, boating, and shoreline drives on both sides of the Red River. Before you head out on the water, give the marker a few minutes. It will change how you see the lake.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · J. P. Smith
- · James P. Hagerman
Related events
- · Creation of Lake Texoma
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Texas Interurban
Sherman-Denison, TX
At the dawn of the twentieth century, electric interurban trolleys knit Texas towns together with fast, frequent service, and the very first such line ran right here between Sherman and Denison. Founded in 1900 and opened in May 1901, the Denison and Sherman Railway built a power plant, car barn, and even a recreational lake for its excursion trains. Merged into ever-larger systems that became the Texas Electric Railway, the interurbans thrived until the automobile pushed them into decline, and the last car passed this spot on the final day of 1948.
Home County of Allison Mayfield, Conservationist
Sherman, TX
Allison Mayfield opened a law practice in Sherman in 1884 and rose to the Texas Railroad Commission in 1897, where he served 26 years, 16 of them as chairman. Created in 1891 to regulate shipping rates, the commission under his leadership took on the far larger task of conserving oil and gas — overseeing pipelines, proration, and, in the 1930s, the vast East Texas field. His insistence on orderly regulation helped Texas flood the Allies with oil during World War II.
Washington Iron Works Inc.
Sherman, TX
After two horseback scouting trips from Quincy, Illinois in 1875, blacksmith Solon Totten moved his family to Sherman to serve the stage lines running out of town. With his brother Levi he opened Totten Bros. Blacksmith in 1876, building and repairing wheels for freight wagons and stagecoaches; renamed Washington Iron Works in 1881, the firm made gun-barrel molds during World War II and grew into a global supplier for oil, gas, and power industries. It is the oldest industry in Sherman.
Dannel Funeral Home
Sherman, TX
Trained in mortuary science in Chicago, John C. Dannel bought the Sherman Undertaking Company and by 1913 had moved his parlor to the courthouse square. When he introduced the area's first motorized hearse in 1917, the local livery stable sued him—a public feud he ultimately won in the newspapers and the courts. In 1923 he commissioned one of the region's earliest purpose-built funeral homes, and the business carried on through four generations of the Dannel family.