Mineola
Mineola, Wood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Since its establishment in 1873, the community of Mineola has been tied historically to the railroad and transportation industries. The Texas & Pacific Railroad planned to connect Longview and Dallas by rail, and began building west in 1872. Meanwhile, the Houston & Great Northern Railroad built northward from Troup. Several communities developed near anticipated depot sites, though they declined when the two railroads joined. The site was named Mineola; various stories recount the naming of the new settlement. Additional rail lines soon connected to Mineola, which experienced impressive growth. The rail brought new residents, including a number of immigrant families, and made Mineola a shipping center for agricultural Wood County. The growth sparked the establishment of various institutions, including a newspaper, the Mineola Monitor; churches, beginning with St. Paul's Baptist Church in 1871; a city cemetery, founded in 1873; a school system started in 1875 and becoming public in 1881; and First National Bank, which organized in 1898. An 1888 fire destroyed 18 buildings downtown, but the community quickly recovered. In the early 20th century, transportation continued to affect Mineola, as the federal government built U.S. Highway 80 through the town. In 1929, the Texas 7 Pacific terminal in Longview relocated to Mineola; many families resettled here, sparking population and commercial growth. The railroads continued to be vital to the community until they declined in the 1950s. In 1996, Amtrak revived passenger service to Mineola, restoring the town's bond with rail. Today, Mineola continues to be a leading community in Wood County and east Texas. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Mineola was born of the railroad in 1873, when the Texas & Pacific building west and the Houston & Great Northern building north converged and gave the new town its depot. Rail lines brought immigrant families, made Mineola a shipping hub for agricultural Wood County, and spurred newspapers, churches, schools, and banks. Even after a devastating 1888 downtown fire, the town rebounded, and its bond with the rails endured until Amtrak revived passenger service in 1996.
Why it matters
Mineola exemplifies the hundreds of American towns that owed their very existence to the nineteenth-century railroad, rising and thriving wherever the tracks decided to meet.
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Related events
- · Arrival of the Texas & Pacific Railroad
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Thomas Breen Family
Mineola, TX
Irish immigrant Thomas Breen followed the Texas & Pacific Railroad to Mineola when it reached town in May 1873 and stayed on as its first ticket agent. He married Irish-born Lucy Wilson, opened a hardware store in the 1880s, and served for years as postmaster and later city alderman. Several of his twelve children carried on in civic life, and the Breen home long served as a meeting place for the town's early Catholic residents.
Railroads in Mineola
Mineola, TX
Mineola owes its very existence to a railroad race: in the summer of 1873 the Houston and Great Northern and the Texas and Pacific drove crews day and night toward a single crossing point, arriving so close together that the two lines could see each other and still argue over who won. The junction town incorporated in 1877, gained a third railroad in 1881, and became a bustling shipping point for watermelons, sweet potatoes and cotton. When the T&P moved its terminal here in 1929, some 200 rail jobs helped carry Mineola through the Great Depression while neighboring towns struggled.
Mineola Post Office
Mineola, TX
Built in 1937 as part of the wave of New Deal public-works construction, the Mineola Post Office is a fine example of the streamlined Moderne style favored for Depression-era federal buildings, with its symmetrical facade and clean horizontal lines. It once housed a Works Progress Administration mural celebrating the shift "from the horse and buggy to modern methods of mail transportation," though the artwork was lost to a 1972 renovation. The building served the town until 1998 and was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark the following year.
Mineola Fire Department
Mineola, TX
When the Texas & Pacific and International & Great Northern railroads met at Mineola in the 1870s, the booming junction town faced a constant menace: fire, which once consumed eighteen downtown buildings in a single night. Residents answered with brick construction, a fire gong at the city well, and in 1907 a volunteer fire company that grew into an official department by 1924. Paid firefighters arrived in 1954, capping decades of hard-won progress against the flames.