Gladewater

The Handbook of Texas says the Texas and Pacific founded Gladewater in 1873 on land bought from Jarrett Dean and Anderson White, and that residents of St. Clair and Point Pleasant moved there after the railroad made it the area's only mail stop. The first post office opened that August. Gladewater incorporated in 1874, but the incorporation lapsed and no new charter came until 1931. The first oil well came in on April 7, 1931, about a mile outside town in the Sabine River bottom.

What the plaque says

Gladewater Founded 1827 as St. Clair, 3 mi. east. Moved to present site on Glade Creek and T & P Railway in 1872. Population increased from 500 to 7000 after discovery of oil in 1931, when it became production and refining hub. Manufacturing, clothing, medical, farming and dairy center. Home of annual East Texas Quarter Horse Show and the richest self-supporting cemetery in the world. Round-up association sponsors June rodeo, nationally known, in unique arena in abandoned salt water disposal pit. Historic sites marked. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 12 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Tyler State Park — 19 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 21 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 21 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Gladewater — 0.8 mi
• Gladewater Lodge No. 852, A.F. & A.M. — 0.8 mi
• John Ben Shepperd — 0.9 mi
• New Hope Missionary Baptist Church — 1.1 mi