Henderson Depot

The Henderson and Overton Branch Railroad was chartered on April 29, 1874, to build about 16 miles from the International and Great Northern at Overton. The first contractor, Ward Dewey and Company, left after a dispute and its contract was forfeited. Piper and Collins finished the line for $100,000 in Henderson bonds, 143,360 acres of state land and the right-of-way and rolling stock. The Handbook dates its opening to May 7, 1877; the I&GN bought it in 1880. When Union Pacific moved to abandon the spur in 2008, the Henderson Economic Development Corporation bought it for $1.2 million.

What the plaque says

Henderson Depot On June 1, 1877, the first train of the Henderson and Overton Branch Railroad arrived here. Only a freight-loading platform was built at that time. The depot was finished by 1901 and the warehouse added in 1909. A Fairbanks 1-and-1/2-ton scale was installed in the floor of the warehouse in 1917. The station became a community gathering place and shipping center serving the International & Great Northern and Missouri-Pacific lines. Rail traffic declined and Missouri-Pacific donated the building to the Rusk County Library. It was moved to this site in 1977. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 10 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.
• East Texas Oil Museum — 16 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.
• Tex Ritter Museum and Texas Country Music Hall of Fame — 27 mi
  Carthage's country music museum, with Tex Ritter's boots, guitars and saddles in a room styled like a movie theater, and exhibits on other Texas stars, Jim Reeves among them.

More markers nearby

• The Railroad in Rusk County — steps away
• Rusk County Agriculture — steps away
• East Texas Musical Convention — steps away
• Arnold Outhouse — steps away