Phalba
Phalba, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This community was first called Snider Springs for John Snider who bought the land on which the springs were situated in 1853. A road, later designated State Highway 198, opened from Canton to Snider Springs in 1858, and the town soon boasted several businesses. Citizens changed the town name to Phalba after the daughter of a local gin owner because another Texas postal station was already called Snider Springs. During the Depression, the Works Progress Administration opened a cannery for local and charitable uses. It used the water from the springs for five steam-operated canners. Though it suffered neglect in the years following World War II, the rural farming and ranching area of Phalba continues as a thriving small community. (1999) Incise on base: Historian Donald and Annette Plemmons
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
First called Snider Springs for John Snider, who bought the spring-fed land in 1853, this community grew after a road from Canton opened in 1858 and soon supported several businesses. To avoid confusion with another Snider Springs postal station, residents renamed the town Phalba after the daughter of a local gin owner. During the Depression, the Works Progress Administration built a cannery here, using spring water to run five steam canners for local and charitable food supply, and the farming and ranching community endures today.
Why it matters
Phalba's story runs from antebellum spring-side settlement to a New Deal cannery, tracing how a small Texas town adapted to a century of changing rural economies.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Snider
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mars Community
Ben Wheeler, TX
Where two country roads crossed in Van Zandt County, the settlement of Mars flourished from the 1880s until about 1930. Early families like the Ammonses and Browns gave land for a church and school, and after farmers traded wheat for cotton, H. W. Brown's gin and grist mill drew a blacksmith shop and mercantile stores. A post office opened in 1891 — first called Acme, then renamed Mars — but a shrinking population closed it by 1907 and consolidated the school in 1916, leaving little behind.
Malakoff
Malakoff, TX
Malakoff began in the 1830s as the settlement of Caney Creek, centered on the grist mill of an Alabama widow, Jane Irvine, and later took the name Mitcham Chapel after an 1852 Methodist church. When a post office opened in 1855, residents chose Malakoff—after a Russian town made famous in the Crimean War. The railroad's arrival in 1880 shifted the town to a new site, and the 1912 discovery of lignite coal made mining Henderson County's largest industry.
Rounsavall Cemetery
Athens, TX
Named for a family that settled Henderson County around 1857, this burial ground has served the Flat Creek community since just after the Civil War. Arba Monroe Rounsavall, who ran a gristmill and later a cotton gin, owned the land and lies here with his wife, as does his son James, a farmer and school trustee. Though the earliest marked grave dates to 1875, an unmarked pioneer burial may reach back to the 1860s among the vertical stones and entry arch.
William H. Humphries Home
Edgewood, TX
William Henry and Molly Humphries were part of a large migration of Mississippi families to Edgewood in the early 1890s, drawn to a growing East Texas town. William opened a general store and bought up farmland to become a local business leader, and in 1893–94 he built this frame Victorian home where Molly hosted civic and church gatherings. The house sheltered the couple and their two sons and survives as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.