Transportation

Midland, TX

Before 1884, the young town of Midland had to ship its drinking water fifty miles by rail from Monahans — a costly, precarious lifeline on the arid Staked Plains. That year residents dug this well by hand, six feet across and fifty feet deep, and fitted it with a pump and a trough that watered both townspeople and their cattle. For a spell it supplied the entire community, turning a rail-dependent camp into a place that could stand on its own.

Longview, TX

Earpville was settled in the late 1840s by James Earp and his relatives from Alabama, growing along a stagecoach line into a hub with a post office, stage stop, Methodist church, and stores that served the region's farmers. When part of Earp's homesite was sold to the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1870, the new town of Longview rose beside the tracks and Earpville faded away. Its disappearance is a classic case of the railroad choosing a town's fate.

Orange, TX

Chartered in 1856, the rail line reaching Orange was meant to knit Texas to a trade route pushing west from the Mississippi. Because the tracks halted at the Sabine River, the first depot here earned the name End of the Line Station, where trains unloaded cargo for transfer to riverboats and ocean freighters. Service continued in part through the Civil War—when some nearby rails were torn up to fortify Sabine Pass—before the interstate route was finally completed in 1881.

Maud, TX

Where Trammel's Trace met the water, a crossing first used by Caddo people and later by French and Spanish explorers became Mark Epperson's ferry sometime before 1837. Travelers relied on it until a wooden bridge, and then the modern span of 1924, made the ferry obsolete. When Lake Texarkana flooded the original site in the 1950s, the state moved this 1936 monument seven miles to higher ground.

Calvert, TX

Dr. Ben F. Hammond arrived from Alabama in 1853 and built a plantation nearby, and when he granted right-of-way to the Houston & Texas Central Railroad in 1869 a depot, post office, and a few stores sprang up to ship planters' goods. As the railroad's fortunes faded, the town withered and had vanished by 1950. Many area residents today descend from the people whom Hammond and neighboring planters gave land to at Emancipation in 1865.

Alvarado, TX

As cotton spread across Johnson County in the 1890s, John Ezell built a gin on his land midway between Alvarado and Cahill in 1896, and it quickly became a major rural enterprise. Fire destroyed it in 1899, but Ezell rebuilt with new equipment before the next season. J. Otto McLeroy took over in 1917, and the gin—served by two rail lines carrying cotton to Dallas, Fort Worth, and Waco—operated until 1948 before its building burned in 1953.

Rankin, TX

When pioneers abandoned nearby Upland and resettled at Rankin in 1912 along the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railway, they first worshipped in the railroad depot before building a shared church on this corner. Future oil baron Ira G. Yates led the donors, and Baptist, Church of Christ, and Methodist trustees jointly oversaw the "Rankin Union Church," finished in 1915. For a time it also housed the local school and remained the county's only church until the late 1920s.

Dallas, TX

On this spot in 1842, John Neely Bryan—the founder of Dallas—launched the first ferry across the Trinity River, giving travelers a way over the water that would anchor a new settlement. In 1854 developer Alexander Cockrell replaced the ferry with a wooden toll bridge, sturdier infrastructure for a fast-growing town. The crossing became a linchpin in Dallas's rise from riverbank hamlet to commercial city.

Junction, TX

On a lot where a public corral had operated since 1877, John Allen built a livery stable in 1879 that quickly became the busiest spot in early Junction. It fed and housed visiting ranch teams, hired out horses and buggies, and drew men to gossip and trade. Owned by T. M. Hodges in its final years, the stable was made obsolete by automobiles in the 1920s.

Newark, TX

Wise County's first post office, called Odessa, opened here on September 8, 1855, with the county's first settler, Benjamin B. Haney, as postmaster. Contractors carried the mail by stagecoach every Saturday from Birdville, twenty-five miles to the southeast, pausing two hours at George Wilmouth's inn before the long return. The office closed in 1866, and a new one—Newark—opened nearby in 1893 after a second Texas town claimed the name Odessa.

Fluvanna, TX

Founded in 1893 as the Deep Creek Congregation, this church followed its scattered West Texas flock from a ranch schoolhouse to the tiny community of Light and finally to Fluvanna, where residents relocated to be near the railroad in 1909. The old Light schoolhouse was even moved to this site in 1910 to serve as its home. The congregation carried on until it disbanded in 1975.

Voss vicinity, TX

In the 1860s and 70s, Flat Top was a busy crossroads on the West Texas frontier, taking its name from a flat-roofed stone building that stood here. First settler Richard Coffey sometimes sheltered with neighbors in Pickettville Fort against raids. The site sat on the 'Wire Road,' which followed the Army Signal Corps telegraph line between Fort Concho and Fort Belknap, and served as a change station on the Fort Concho–Brownwood stage route.

Evadale, TX

Benjamin Richardson, a de Zavala colony settler who arrived around 1830, made his home on a bluff over the Neches and, with his sons, ran a ferry that proved a lifeline during the 1836 Runaway Scrape, when panicked civilians fled Santa Anna's advance toward the U.S. border. The place was later renamed Ford's Bluff for a milling family, and in 1904 the Kirby Lumber Company built a sawmill here, giving the site its final name, Evadale, in honor of a local schoolteacher.

Willis, TX

Founded before 1840 in a rich plantation district, Danville grew into a thriving trade center with fifteen businesses, churches, and good schools. When its leaders refused right-of-way to the Houston & Great Northern Railway in the 1870s, commerce fled to the new railroad town of Willis, and Danville faded until only Sheperd Hill Cemetery remained. Among its people was Jonathan Lindley, who died defending the Alamo in March 1836.

Schulenburg, TX

Laid out on Keziah Cryer's land grant, the town of Lyons took its name from settler James Lyons, killed in an 1837 Comanche raid that also carried off his son Warren. By the 1860s Lyons had stores, a Masonic lodge, school, and post office and sat on the wartime 'Cotton Road' to Mexico—but it withered in the 1870s when the Southern Pacific Railroad bypassed it.

Uvalde, TX

Fort Inge was established in 1849 by Captain Sidney Burbank and named for Lieutenant Zebulon M. P. Inge, killed at Resaca de la Palma in 1846. Set on the Texas frontier near Uvalde, it guarded the southern Overland Mail route against raids and sheltered travelers and troops through the mid-nineteenth century. Abandoned during the Civil War, it was reoccupied by federal troops from 1866 to 1869 and later served as a Texas Ranger camp.

Fort Worth, TX

In 1901 the Texas Legislature cleared the way for an electric interurban line linking Fort Worth and Dallas, and within a year the overhead wires were humming. The thirty-five-mile trip took just over an hour, cars carried up to forty passengers, and riders could flag the train down anywhere along the route. Paved highways eventually stole its traffic, and the last car rolled on Christmas Eve, 1934.

Navasota, TX

Ira M. Freeman built this two-story pine inn in 1856 as a way station and hotel for passengers on the several stage lines threading through Navasota. Travelers of every sort lodged here — among them Sam Houston — and during the Civil War it hosted officers and important visitors, while Freeman's barns sheltered the coaches and teams.

Cuero, TX

Around 1839–40, Daniel Boone Friar built a home and store at the crossing of two important roads, and it quickly became the hub of early De Witt County life. Within a few years the two-story frame building was serving as a stagecoach stop, a temporary courthouse, and the county's first post office, named Cuero, with Friar as postmaster. Crockett Cardwell bought the place in 1849 and kept it running as a stage stand and gathering spot until the railroad drew the town four miles south in 1873; the old building came down in 1916.

Lisbon, IL

This spot once served travelers on the Chicago-to-Ottawa road as a stop on the Frink & Walker line, the dominant stagecoach empire of the frontier Midwest in the 1830s and 1840s. Before railroads laced the region together, coaches like these carried mail, passengers, and news across the prairie, and stations offered fresh horses, food, and shelter along the rutted route.

El Paso, TX

In August 1848, just months after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo drew the El Paso region into the United States, T. Frank White planted the settlement of Frontera on the bank of the Rio Grande. Sitting at Mule Ford on the old Chihuahua Trail — part of the Camino Real — it briefly held real promise, with White serving as magistrate, customs collector, and trading-post proprietor. The Compromise of 1850 placed Frontera on the Texas side, White lost his influence, and the little settlement faded, absorbed at last into the modern city of El Paso.

Houston, TX

An 1840 attempt by merchant Andrew Briscoe and the Harris family to build a railroad to the Brazos failed, but their Harrisburg holdings passed in 1847 to investors led by San Jacinto hero Gen. Sidney Sherman. Chartered in 1850, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado carried the first train passengers in Texas history on April 21, 1853—fittingly, to a celebration saluted by the "Twin Sisters" cannon of San Jacinto. Its depot, roundhouse, and docks once stood a block north of here.

Wichita Falls, TX

Edgar B. Gorsline came from Indiana to Wichita Falls in 1889, ran a grocery and bakery, then opened the Fashion Livery Stable on this spot in 1892. It rented horses and rigs, boarded animals, met every train with carriages, and supplied conveyances for funerals — the everyday transportation hub of a town still years from the automobile. Gorsline sold out in 1907 and the building was razed in 1908.

Hempstead vicinity, TX

Jared E. Groce, one of Stephen F. Austin's earliest and wealthiest colonists, opened this ferry across the Brazos in 1822, giving travelers a crossing on a river that has since wandered from its old bed. In the spring of 1836, as Santa Anna's army pressed east, Sam Houston's Texas Army encamped near here from late March into April, resting and drilling before the campaign that ended at San Jacinto. The State of Texas marked the spot in its 1936 centennial.

Platte County, MO

In the 1840s this Platte County property belonged to German immigrant John Floersch, who ran the Halfway House along the newly completed Weston-to-Platte City toll road and collected its tolls. Set on Missouri's western border in the years before the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, the site later passed to pro-slavery owners who kept a tavern here. It's a small window onto how immigrants, roads, and the slavery question all converged on the antebellum frontier.

Gonzales, TX

Hopkinsville sprang up after farmer D.S. Hopkins settled here in 1852, growing into a thriving pioneer community in the surrounding farm-and-ranch country. Cattle herds gathered here before striking out for the Chisholm Trail. When a new railroad bypassed the town in 1873, its residents pulled up stakes and moved south to found Waelder, leaving Hopkinsville a memory on the land.

Eldorado, TX

In the ranch country of West Texas, the run between San Angelo and Sonora depended on relays like this one, where four-horse coaches paused before pushing on across dry, rolling range. Beginning in 1894, Theodore Jackson Savell's line carried mail and passengers on a demanding 75-mile daily circuit, and when spring rains turned the road to mud, travelers climbed out to shove the coach uphill. The service lasted until 1909, when the automobile finally delivered the county's mail.

Austin, TX

New York native John Bremond opened a dry goods store here as early as 1847, and by the 1860s he and his sons had built John Bremond & Company into a cornerstone of Austin commerce. The family helped launch the city's first hook-and-ladder company and championed the railroad that reached Austin in 1871; a back room even birthed what became the State National Bank. The firm later roasted and shipped its own coffee statewide before closing in 1967, its old limestone building reputedly Austin's oldest commercial structure at its 1979 demolition.

Berkeley, CA

By 1900 downtown Berkeley had grown up around Shattuck Avenue, and on this site stood a brick livery stable run by John Fitzpatrick, an early operator of the Ocean View Trolley, offering hacks and carriages at all hours. In 1910 the Berkeley Farm Creamery took over the site, selling dairy from nearby farms including Strawberry Canyon's Such Ranch. In 1936 the West Coast's first Red Cross chapter — organized in 1898 during the Spanish-American War — bought the property for its headquarters.

Frisco, TX

Settlers drawn to free land, spring water, and timber in the Peters Colony named their community Lebanon and won a post office in 1860. Sitting on the Preston Road and Shawnee Trail, it became a favorite stop for cattle drovers and grew through the 1880s and 1890s into a town of shops, churches, a hotel, and a two-story school. When the railroad bypassed it in 1902 in favor of nearby Frisco, residents drifted away, and by the 21st century only three original buildings remained.

Lometa, TX

Lometa began as a railroad town in the mid-1880s, and when a second line arrived in 1909 the railroads needed water for their thirsty steam locomotives. A dam completed in 1911–12 backed up Emory and Salt Creeks into a lake—known as Santa Fe Lake—that watered the trains and doubled as a recreation spot. As diesel engines replaced steam, the need faded, and the reservoir was retired in the 1970s.

Brownfield, TX

By 1903 the French family had built a two-story home on the West Texas plains that became a working waypoint of the freight economy. Teamsters hauling goods from the Texas & Pacific Railroad, along with cattle drovers passing through, found a campground, water, hot meals, and a horse pen here. From 1905 the home also served as a stop on the mail route linking Lamesa through Brownfield to Gomez, until the mail was rerouted and the service ended in 1910.

Eldorado, TX

From 1894 to 1909 this corner of the old Mark Fury Ranch served as a stagecoach stop on Theodore Jackson Savell's line between San Angelo and Sonora. Six mornings a week a horn announced the stage's arrival, carrying passengers, mail, and express across country so remote that the line was, as the marker puts it, a thread of life for the region.

Lufkin, TX

In 1908 Daniel Webster Martin and his two sons opened a small wagon shop in Lufkin, where Martin, an inventor and designer, developed specialized wagons for the booming lumber industry. Incorporated as the Martin Wagon Company in 1910 with partner B. L. Zeagler, the business thrived until the Depression cut demand for timber products. It was later absorbed by the Lufkin Foundry and Machine Co.—renamed Lufkin Industries—and became the seed of that company's trailer division.

Moulton, TX

When the Moore brothers granted a right-of-way across their vast Lavaca County ranchland to the railroad in 1887, they helped conjure the town of Moulton into being. The next year the thirty-two-room Moore Hotel rose east of the depot, complete with a showroom for traveling salesmen and a dining room that became the social heart of the area. Later expanded by the Kotzbue family, the grand hotel outlived its heyday and was finally razed in 1940.

Rockdale, TX

Built in 1880 beside the International & Great Northern depot, the three-story Mundine Hotel opened in 1881 to serve the rail travelers pouring into the young town of Rockdale. John Mundine of Lexington built the inn, run by Dr. and Mrs. W. A. Brooks. A fire in 1888 destroyed the building and killed 11 of its 13 occupants, and it was never rebuilt.

Georgetown, TX

Moravian immigrant Johann Neusser reached Texas in 1872 and, in 1881, led a group of fellow immigrant families to this part of Williamson County. When the Georgetown and Granger Railroad crossed his land in 1890, a general store and dance hall sprang up, and a post office in 1892 gave the community its name. But a depot built in nearby Granger drew the trade away, and Neusser faded by the early 1900s.

Nixon vicinity, TX

The community of Nockenut took root in 1857 when German and Polish immigrants settled here, thriving into a village of 80 by 1890 with stores, a school, a church, a cotton gin, and a cemetery. When the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad bypassed it in 1906, the town began to fade, until only its cemetery remained.

Snyder, TX

In the early 1900s the O.K. Wagon Yard on Snyder's old Jackass Avenue offered travelers rooms and horse stalls for two bits apiece, along with blacksmithing, harness repair, and stud animals — and, with the right introduction, a jar of homemade "White Lightning." Saturdays brought passed-hat rodeos, and "first Mondays" drew farmers, ranchers, and mule skinners to swap livestock and goods. The yard closed in the 1930s.

Newton, TX

In the settlement era of the early 1800s, this Sabine River crossing was one of only four main gateways for pioneers entering Texas from Louisiana, letting families bring their stock and household goods across the border. Known first as Hickman's Ferry and later for Dr. Timothy Burr — a second cousin of Vice President Aaron Burr — it also anchored "the Old Beef Trail," over which thousands of cattle were driven to Alexandria for shipment to New Orleans. By the Civil War the site was strategic enough that Confederates dug breastworks and cleared timber to guard against Federal invasion.

San Augustine, TX

Standing on El Camino Real, the Old Spanish Road, this customhouse was one of just three ports of entry in the Republic of Texas between 1836 and 1845, collecting duties for the entire eastern border. For years the only public building in town, it doubled as a courthouse where noted lawyers argued their cases before a new structure replaced it in 1855.

Happy, TX

On the high, dry Texas Panhandle, the Hugh Currie family's 1891 home, "Happy Hollow," stood alone along the Amarillo-to-Tulia freight and stage route, doubling as the place where scattered settlers collected their mail and freight. The Postal Department shortened the cheerful name to "Happy" for the post office, and when the Santa Fe railroad came through in 1906, the whole town simply picked up and moved two miles west to meet the tracks.

Abilene, TX

In December 1880, a Texas & Pacific Railroad official met local cattlemen near this spot — the old headquarters of the Hashknife Ranch — to choose a site for a cattle-shipping center. Bypassing the county seat of Buffalo Gap, they platted a brand-new town and named it Abilene after the famous Kansas cattle town. A lively sale of city lots followed in March 1881, and Abilene grew swiftly into a major regional city of West Texas.

Odessa, TX

Francis M. Tallant opened Odessa's first livery stable and wagon yard in 1897, where cowmen stabled horses before heading for the nearby ranch saloon and travelers found shelter for their teams. A later owner advertised "good rigs" and prompt service, but the automobile changed everything: in 1915 Joe W. Rice bought the place and turned it into a garage. The surviving sandstone structure marks the pivot from horse to horsepower.

Palestine, TX

Founded in the 1840s as a ferrying point on the Caddo Trace, Magnolia grew into a busy Trinity River landing where flatboats and steamers carried cotton on the four-day run to Galveston. At its 1863 peak the town had several hundred residents, eight stores, and a lively tavern that emptied whenever a steamer's whistle sounded upriver. Texas rivers proved too shallow and debris-choked for lasting trade, and after 1880 railroads replaced the boats, leaving Magnolia behind.

Chester, TX

In the early 1800s this spot was Ta-Ku-La — "Peach Tree" — the headquarters of the Alabama Indians, sited where two great pioneer trails crossed. Routes reaching from the Gulf at Anahuac to Nacogdoches and from Opelousas, Louisiana, toward San Antonio met here, making the village an important trading crossroads. As white settlement pressed in, the Alabama people withdrew southward, where their descendants hold the only Indian reservation in Texas; the site also gave rise to lumber and business magnate John Henry Kirby.

Crowell, TX

Founded in 1880 by early settlers Benjamin E. Lower and the Wesley family, Pease City grew around a stone post office and trading post that served some 3,500 square miles of thinly settled North Texas country, with mail carried by stage or horseback. Named for the Pease River and Governor E. M. Pease, the town faded when its post office closed in 1885 and the county seat shifted to Margaret. The site later became part of Foard County.

New Braunfels, TX

The oldest part of this building rose around 1851 from local cedar and limestone, and in 1858 German immigrant Jacob Schmitz bought it as the new home of his Guadalupe Hotel. The traveling writer Frederick Law Olmsted praised the inn's Old World atmosphere as he passed through the German settlements of central Texas. A third story was added in 1873 and the hotel took Schmitz's name, though its original facade has since been much changed.

Lone Star, TX

During the days of the Republic of Texas, E. B. Smith ran a ferry and mill at this Big Cypress Bayou crossing on the Pittsburg–Jefferson stage road. John Spearman bought the ferry in 1850, and by 1870 the state authorized a toll bridge here, charging anywhere from two cents for a sheep to a dollar for a loaded eight-horse team. The crossing kept goods and travelers moving through Northeast Texas.

Canadian, TX

On the 1870s freight and military trail linking Fort Elliott, Fort Supply, and Fort Dodge, A. G. Springer built a road ranch that became Hemphill County's first post office—famously connected to its corral by a tunnel from the dugout store. It was stagecoach stand, tavern, and supply house for teamsters and buffalo hunters, and a favorite stop for soldiers seeking a card game. In 1877 the poker-loving Springer and his partner Tom Ledbetter were killed in a gunfight with angry soldiers and buried at the ranch.

Brenham, TX

For 122 years this spot was the center of Brenham hospitality, beginning as a two-story log stage depot and cabin complex known as the Washington County Hotel. General Sam Houston once lodged here while campaigning against secession on the eve of the Civil War. Renamed the St. Anthony Hotel in 1914 after a remodeling by Mrs. A. A. Hacker, it served travelers as a train transfer station and later a bus terminal, famed for its annual Christmas eggnog party.

Weldon, TX

The settlement began around William Morrow's 1850 cotton gin and gained a post office renamed Weldon in 1869 for pioneer merchant Weldon Jones Murchison. Cotton and timber drove the local economy, with logs hauled by tram road to distant mills by 1900. When the Beaumont & Great Northern Railway arrived in 1911, the whole town picked up and moved south to meet the tracks, prospering despite ruinous fires before its post office finally closed in 1976.

Lometa, TX

Named for a 1850s cattle king who laid out the townsite and donated land for a cemetery and school, Senterfitt grew up around an early stage stand and post office established in 1877. At its height the town of some 400 people supplied a wide swath of central Texas with wool, hides, cotton, and pecans. When the railroad passed it by around 1890, the town faded away—a common fate for settlements that lived and died by the rails.

Nixon, TX

Settled in the 1860s, Union Valley grew around a log schoolhouse donated in 1872 that also served as Masonic hall, church, and courtroom — the multipurpose civic heart of a frontier settlement. A post office opened in 1883, and stores, cotton gins, saloons, and smithies bearing a roll call of pioneer family names lined its streets. Like so many rural towns, it faded after the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad bypassed it in 1906.

Paradise, TX

One of Wise County's earliest settlers, O.H.P. Read, made his home here in 1858 in a community first called Eldorado, where William M. Anderson opened a general store and surveyor Ben Banks laid out a town square. Renamed Paradise after a post office naming conflict in 1876, the town shifted northeast in the 1890s to be near the new Rock Island rail line, and "old" Paradise faded away by 1927 as its cotton crops failed. Today only a home built by Confederate Lt. William Hall Jay remains on the old square.

Wallisville, TX

Elisha H. R. Wallis settled here in 1825 within an empresario grant, and by 1858 Wallisville was the seat of newly organized Chambers County. It grew into a busy market town with a shipyard, cotton gin, skating rink, and the county's first newspaper, linked to Galveston by sloop and to Liberty by daily stage — even boasting a courthouse with a tower built for executions. The county seat left in 1908 after the celebrated "County Seat Hog War," a storm battered the town in 1915, and part of the old site now lies beneath the Wallisville Reservoir.

Morse, TX

In 1873 the English-born hunters Jim and Bob Cator wintered a buffalo camp on the plains above the Canadian River, in what became the first permanent settlement of the Texas Panhandle. By 1875 it had grown into a two-room trading post stocked with groceries and ammunition—the first north of the Canadian—wryly named Zulu for the African warriors then in the news. As a depot on the Fort Dodge–Fort Bascom military road it served hunters, soldiers, and freighters until it was finally abandoned in 1912.

Owensville, TX

Owensville served as Robertson County's third county seat from 1855 to 1869, on land donated by D. H. Love and named for pioneer county clerk Harrison Owen. Sitting on the Houston-to-Waco mail, stage, and freighting road, the town drew officials, doctors, lawyers, and merchants, and during the Civil War it armed and dispatched soldiers. When the Houston & Texas Central Railway bypassed it in 1868, the county records moved to Calvert and the town faded, leaving only its cemetery to mark the site.

Lampasas, TX

When the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe reached Lampasas in 1882, the town became a rail terminus and a fashionable spa destination famed for its healing sulphur springs. Houston and Galveston businessmen built the Park Hotel, opened in 1883: a 300-foot frame resort with 200 rooms, ballrooms, a bandstand, and a mule-drawn trolley to the depot, host in 1885 to the first Texas Bankers Association convention. Its glory was brief — as the rails pushed west and medicine outgrew mineral cures, the hotel declined and burned in 1895.

Bovina, TX

Parmerton began as Parmer Switch on the Pecos & Northern Texas Railroad in 1898 and grew when a model farm using the Campbell dry-farming method took root there in 1906. A townsite company laid out streets in 1907, and Parmerton briefly became the county seat with its own post office. But when nearby Farwell won the county seat later that year, residents literally packed up and moved their houses away, leaving only the railroad switch to mark the spot.