Ladonia

Ladonia bought its railroad. The Handbook of Texas says town officials enticed the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe with a bonus, and its arrival in 1887 made Ladonia a marketing town for cotton, corn, oats and wheat. By 1897 it reported six dry-goods stores, three drugstores, three cotton gins and two banks. In the mid-1970s its major industry was Texas-A-Pak, which shipped horse meat for sale in European markets, and the school was consolidated with Pecan Gap's to form the Fannindel district.

What the plaque says

Ladonia Settled about 1840 by James McFarland and Daniel Davis, this community was first called McCownville after early settler Frank McCown. The town's first merchant, James H. Cole, a carpenter who moved to the county in 1855, planned and staked out the town site and included wide streets. According to local legend McCown changed the town name in 1857 to honor Ladonna Millsay, a traveler on a wagon train from Tennessee who entertained residents with her singing. By 1858 the settlement had a post office named Ladonia. The town grew rapidly after 1860 because of its fertile farming area. The community incorporated in 1885 and had a population of 700, two cotton gins, a bank, a flour mill, a school, and several churches. The arrival of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway in 1887 made Ladonia an agricultural marketing town for cotton, corn, oats and wheat and resulted in a business boom. The population had increased to 2,000 by 1897 and the town included 100 businesses. The town declined slowly as agricultural goods were shipped over improved roads and citizens moved to larger cities. By 1936 Ladonia had 1,119 citizens and 39 businesses. By 1990 the population was 658. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 17 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 22 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 27 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.

More markers nearby

• Bethel Lodge No. 134 A. F. & A. M. — steps away
• Ladonia Cemetery — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Ladonia — 0.3 mi
• Little Bethel Baptist Church — 0.5 mi