Dialville

Dialville grew around a railroad flag stop. John Dial opened a store on the new Kansas and Gulf Short Line in 1883, and the post office opened in 1885 under the name Dialville because another Texas town was already called Dial. The store and post office closed in 1886, and John Thomas Bailey reopened them in 1897. By 1915 the town had 400 people, two churches, a school, a bank and a weekly paper, the Dialville News, and about 1916 L. E. Scott opened a theater and published the Dialville Reporter. The school joined Jacksonville's in 1959.

What the plaque says

Dialville In 1866, Confederate John J. Dial (d.1928) joined a group of 60 wagons headed for Texas. He arrived in this area the same year and soon began farming the land. With the 1882 arrival of the Kansas and Gulf Short Line Railroad, Dial opened a general store near the rail line. The following year, Dial and his wife, Ida Mae (Jones), deeded eight acres of land to the railroad for a flag stop station. The town site he platted at the site of the station was named Dialville when the post office was established in 1885. There was little growth in Dialville until 1897, when the flourishing tomato and peach production and shipping business revitalized the area. In that year, John T. Bailey opened a store and reactivated the post office. Dialville's first school was established in 1899. C. D. Jarratt, a leading East Texas fruit and vegetable sales agent, arrived about 1900 and helped develop the town into a leading shipping point for tomatoes and peaches. Dialville was the scene of much commercial activity during the early years of the 20th century, but by the mid 1920s had begun to decline. It remains an important part of the regional and agricultural history of Cherokee County. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 19 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 22 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.

More markers nearby

• Old Rusk Tramway — 4.0 mi
• Town of Craft — 4.2 mi
• Texas State Railroad — 4.6 mi
• Gent Village — 4.9 mi