United States Post Office and Courthouse
Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Currently, only Federal office building to straddle state line. Present Texas-Arkansas state boundary (established in 1841 by United States and Republic of Texas) passes through center. Each state had separate post offices until 1892, when first joint office was built on this site. It was razed in 1930, and in 1933 the present structure was completed. The base is of Texas pink granite while walls are of limestone from Arkansas. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1970
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Texarkana is that rare American city split down the middle by a state line, and this federal building is unique for straddling it — the Texas-Arkansas boundary, fixed in 1841 by the United States and the Republic of Texas, runs straight through its center. For decades each state kept its own post office until the first joint office rose here in 1892; the present 1933 building even wears both states, its base of Texas pink granite and its walls of Arkansas limestone. It stands as a monument to a border that residents cross with every errand.
Why it matters
It is the only federal office building to sit astride a state line, a concrete expression of the Republic of Texas boundary and the peculiar dual identity of a border city.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
St. James Episcopal Church
Texarkana, TX
Episcopalians in the young railroad town of Texarkana organized this congregation in 1876, meeting first in a hotel before building on land donated by the Texas & Pacific Railroad. Citizens of every faith chipped in for the first church, and successive buildings were enlarged over the decades. St. James went on to help found or support at least seven other area churches and pioneered local aid to the elderly.
Moores-Burke-Ragland Home
Texarkana, TX
Built in 1895 for Rachel Perry Godbold Moores, widow of a member of Texarkana's pioneer Moores family, this Neo-Classical residence was designed by architect Henry Koerner with fish-scale shingling and elegant parquet floors. It passed to Robert Emmett Burke in 1904 and later housed the Ragland family for nearly half a century. The house stands as a showpiece of a booming late-19th-century railroad town on the Texas-Arkansas line.
First Disciples of Christ in Texas
Texarkana, TX
In 1831, when Mexico governed Texas and demanded Catholic allegiance, the McKinney family and neighbors gathered for informal Protestant worship at McKinney's Landing in defiance of the law. A traveling preacher formally constituted the church in the winter of 1841–42 under Collin McKinney—a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence for whom Collin County and the city of McKinney are named. Five enslaved members of the family belonged to the congregation, which followed the railroad to Van Alstyne and became the First Christian Church, a direct descendant of that 1831 gathering.
The French in Texas
Texarkana, TX
For roughly a century after La Salle planted his ill-fated Fort Saint Louis on the Texas coast in 1685, French explorers and traders pressed into a land Spain claimed but barely held. In 1719 the French captain Bénard de La Harpe came up the Red River and built a second Fort Saint Louis among the Nassonite Indians, turning this stretch of northeast Texas into a busy trading crossroads with the Caddo, Wichita, Tawakoni, Tonkawa and other nations. The French traded freely — guns included — which made them more welcome than the silver-hunting Spanish, until Louisiana passed to Spain in 1762. Tens of thousands of French and Caddo artifacts recovered nearby, down to millstones from a frontier flour mill, still testify to that vanished commerce.