Hooks

Hooks grew around Warren Hooks's plantation, in a county where Black residents already outnumbered White ones in 1850. The Handbook of Texas says rail service came in 1876 and the town stayed small, about 100 people in 1925 and again in 1936. Then the Red River Army Depot and the Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant went up just south of town. Population stood near 800 in 1940 and reached 2,319 by 1950. Across the county the two installations took nearly 40,000 acres and had shipped 769,977 tons of materiel by the end of the war in 1945.

What the plaque says

Hooks Established about 1848 as a supply center for 5,000-acre plantation of Warren Hooks; 1841-1860 post office for area was Myrtle Springs, home of Hooks' son, Col. Robert W. Hooks, 11th Texas Cavalry, Confederate Army. Post office placed here 1884 was named for Warren Hooks. Farming continued until 1942, when Hooks "boomed" suddenly. Population soared from 400 to 3,000 with opening of Lone Star and Red River Ordnance plants. Economy is diversified, with cotton and soybean production. A religious town, Hooks has sixteen churches. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of Regional History — 15 mi
  Texarkana's oldest museum, in an 1879 brick building on State Line Avenue, with Caddo pottery, one of Scott Joplin's pianos and a research library of city directories and photographs.
• Atlanta State Park — 16 mi
  A shoreline park on Wright Patman Lake, leased from the Army in 1954, where Caddo ancestors farmed the Sulphur River and wagon traces such as the Bobo Ferry trace still cross the woods.

More markers nearby

• Pecan Point Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence — 0.8 mi
• Bowie County — 6.3 mi
• New Boston — 6.9 mi
• Arkadelphia Rosenwald School — 7.4 mi