First Telegraph Office in Texas

The wire to Marshall came the long way round. Texas Escapes says the line, opened on February 14, 1854, linked Marshall with New Orleans by way of Shreveport, Alexandria, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi, so that messages could reach other major American cities. The same year the company extended its wire to Henderson, Rusk, Crockett, Montgomery, Houston and Galveston, and the article says Marshall's standing as the state's most wired city did not last long. Western Union began operating in Texas about a year after 1865, and the Marshall office closed on February 9, 1972.

What the plaque says

First Telegraph Office in Texas The Red River and Texas Telegraph Company opened Texas' first telegraph office in Marshall on February 14, 1854. Since the first demonstration of the telegraph in 1844, with communication between Washington D.C. and Baltimore, inventor Samuel Morse (1791-1872) had been offering revenue from his invention to various outlets. At the time, the impoverished Texas Embassy in Washington D.C. was not interested in the project. It would be another ten years before the existing Shreveport Telegraph Line would extend into Texas. By 1852, New Orleans-based financial backers founded the Red River and Texas Telegraph Company to install the first commercial telegraph lines into the state. A telegraph office was opened in Marshall, a distance of 49 miles from Shreveport. Lines were quickly extended to Henderson, Rusk, Crockett, Montgomery, Houston and Galveston. The telegraph office was housed in Travis George Twyman's store on the courthouse square. The telegraph became the primary technology for industries like railroad and newspapers. During the Civil War, the telegraph became an important line of communication for both the Union and the Confederacy. Union soldiers attempted to reach Shreveport to cut off telegraph communication to Texas but were unsuccessful. From October 1, 1879 to July 1, 1880, more than a quarter million messages flowed through Western Union wires across the state. By 1938, Western Union provided service to 228 of the state's 254 counties, maintaining 12,400 miles of poles and 80,700 miles of wire. In 1972, Western Union closed the Marshall office which had been in operation since 1854. Later turned into a city park, the space around the old Marshall office recalls the advance of technology and communication in the state. (2022)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Harrison County Historical Museum — steps away
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 0.5 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 14 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Whetstone Memorial — steps away
• Harrison County — steps away
• Marshall — steps away
• The Hub Shoe Store — steps away