The Southern Pacific Railroad in Ennis
Ennis, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1887 the City of Ennis was established at this site, the northern terminus of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad (later part of the Southern Pacific Railroad). The city is named after early railroad official Cornelius Ennis. Expansion by the railroad at this location in 1891 spurred decades of agricultural, commercial, and industrial growth. Completion of lakes for the railroad's use and the construction of shops, a roundhouse, and offices earned Ennis renown as the junction of railroads and cotton fields. The lakes and several railroad buildings remain.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ennis was founded in 1887 as the northern terminus of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, later part of the Southern Pacific system, and named for railroad official Cornelius Ennis. A major expansion in 1891 brought shops, a roundhouse, offices, and reservoir lakes, fueling decades of growth. The town earned a reputation as the junction where railroads met cotton fields, and several of those railroad buildings and lakes survive.
Why it matters
It illustrates how the railroad literally created towns across late-19th-century Texas, binding agriculture, commerce, and industry to the rhythms of the rails.
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Related people
- · Cornelius Ennis
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Railroads in Ennis
Ennis, TX
The Houston & Texas Central pushed its tracks past here in 1871, and in 1872 the town of Ennis was platted along the line and named for railroad official Cornelius Ennis. Local boosters won a division point with roundhouse, machine shops, and headquarters—on the promise that Ennis could always supply their water—while magnate Hetty Green's Texas Midland and a Dallas-to-Corsicana interurban later threaded the town. The interurban ran until 1941 and the last Texas Midland lines closed by 1975, leaving Union Pacific on the original route.
Old Lake Dam
Ennis, TX
Built in 1891, this dam impounded the water that clinched Ennis's future, created to supply the Houston and Texas Central Railroad's station and machine shops after the line chose to move its divisional headquarters there from Corsicana. The reservoir it formed went by several names as it powered the town's growth and later served for recreation and flood control. A humble earthwork, it marks the deal that turned Ennis into a railroad town.
Old Bardwell
Bardwell, TX
In the 1880s Ellis County was booming cotton country, and a little community called Pleasant Valley grew up here to serve farmers hauling their crop by wagon. A steam-powered cotton gin, a store, a church, blacksmiths and even a local paper turned the settlement into the town of Bardwell—named, by local tradition, after a gin owner who lived elsewhere and held the property barely a year. When the railroad passed a half-mile east in 1907, the town literally picked itself up and moved to the tracks, and Old Bardwell faded away.
Rice
Rice, TX
Settlers displaced by an 1866 flood at nearby Porter's Bluff gathered here, and when the Houston and Texas Central Railroad bypassed the old town and ran through this site, a Houston businessman donated five hundred acres for a station and townsite that took his name. Cotton drove the local economy, with one of the town's first businesses a gin and its depot a busy shipping point, while troop trains and a Liberty Bell tour later rolled through on the rails that had made the place.