Frost

In 1890 Wylie N. Jones built a waterworks to supply Frost from a nearby lake, and he also built a small steamboat, then one of the few on an inland lake in Texas, the Handbook of Texas says. The town had grown up after the St. Louis Southwestern bypassed the older settlement of Crossroads, and its businesses moved to the tracks. By the early 1900s Frost had six cotton gins, an oil mill, seven grocery stores, two banks and three drugstores, and about 700 residents in 1910. It peaked near 900 in 1929.

What the plaque says

Frost Prior to 1887 the community of Cross Roads existed two miles south of this location. The town of Frost was created when a post office was established in March of that year to serve settlements west of Corsicana along the St. Louis, Arkansas, and Texas Railroad. Businesses previously located at Cross Roads moved to the new town. Land for the townsite was donated by R. J. Sanders and the town was named in honor of Samuel R. Frost (1846-1908), Navarro County judge and state legislator. The city of Frost was incorporated on June 7, 1893. Churches of several denominations and schools were organized in the early years of Frost's existence. A Methodist church was established in 1887, and three years later the Frost Baptist Church was organized. The Frost Common School District was created in May 1890. Two banks opened in Frost in the early 1900s and a newspaper, the Frost Enterprise, was published weekly. Many of the town's structures were destroyed or damaged in a May 6, 1930 tornado. Since its beginning Frost has remained an agricultural community, and retains the charm and atmosphere of a rural Texas town. (1987)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — 20 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 20 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 21 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 28 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.

More markers nearby

• Frost Baptist Church — 0.2 mi
• City of Blooming Grove — 5.3 mi
• Mertens Baptist Church — 5.4 mi
• Blooming Grove United Methodist Church — 5.5 mi