Texas Midland Railroad
Terrell, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A northeast line of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad was built through this area in 1882. In 1892 it was purchased by Mrs. Hetty Green and later reorganized as the Texas Midland Railroad. Under the innovative leadership of her son Edward H. R. Green, it was instrumental in the early economic development of area communities, especially Terrell, where maintenance facilities were located. Later part of the Southern Pacific System, the line was operated until 1958. This railroad car, found at Sand Lake, is typical of business cars used on the line.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The railroad remade this corner of North Texas. A line laid in 1882 was bought a decade later by the famously frugal financier Hetty Green and reorganized as the Texas Midland Railroad under her son Edward. For generations the line carried the freight and passengers that built up towns like Terrell, where its maintenance shops were based, until it ceased operating in 1958.
Why it matters
Regional railroads like the Texas Midland were the arteries of late-19th-century growth, and few had owners as colorful as the 'Witch of Wall Street.'
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Related people
- · Hetty Green
- · Edward H. R. Green
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
W. E. Henderson Home
Terrell, TX
William Ebenezer Henderson came to Texas from Louisiana as a teenager in 1862, went to work for a cattleman at nineteen, and rose to become a prosperous commission dealer shipping cattle to the great St. Louis market. In 1898 he poured that success into this home of select heart pine from the Beaumont big timber, finished with fine mantels and tile hauled back from St. Louis and crowned with lofty twelve-foot ceilings. It stands as a monument to the cattle-trade fortunes that built up East Texas towns in the decades after the Civil War.
Texas & Pacific Railroad Freight Depot
Terrell, TX
Terrell was born in 1873 along the route of the Texas & Pacific Railroad, its land donated by local families on the condition that a depot be built here. The first frame depot rose that year and quickly grew as freight traffic swelled; this brick freight depot replaced it in 1911 during a wave of national rail expansion. It served the region's economy until closing in 1977, retaining its broad hipped roof and freight doors.
Quinlan
Quinlan, TX
Quinlan grew up around 1892 as a stop on the Texas Midland Railroad, owned by the famed Wall Street bond investor Hettie Green and run by her son Edward. Named for a railroad general manager, the town incorporated by 1896 and became a shipping point for cotton growers, boasting gins, banks, and churches before oil and the building of Lake Tawakoni reshaped its economy in the twentieth century.
First National Bank of Wills Point
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When the railroad reached Wills Point in the late 1870s it sparked a boom, and in 1879 John E. Owens opened a private bank to serve the growing town. Federally chartered in 1895, it weathered the 1933 bank holiday by merging with a local rival and carried on as the community's primary financial institution for decades. Its officers doubled as judges, mayors, and school-board members.