Longview Junction

The Stephen F. Austin State University Heritage Center describes the line that tied the Junction to town. The Longview and Junction Railway Company ran from the Texas and Pacific depot north on Fredonia Street, east on Methvin to the I&GN depot at Sixth and Methvin, about 3,300 feet of narrow gauge. Cars carried up to 20 riders for a nickel, with one car open for summer and one enclosed for winter. Uncle Isaac Smith drove for many years. The last mule-car run was September 25, 1912.

What the plaque says

Longview Junction This community originated in the 1870s with the junction of the Texas & Pacific and International & Great Northern Railroad tracks. Churches, residences, hotels, restaurants, businesses, boardinghouses, and school developed in the area to accommodate workers and travelers. A mule powered street railway system operated from 1883 to 1912 to facilitate transportation between downtown Longview and the junction. Annexed to the city of Longview in 1904, Longview Junction remained an identifiable community until automobiles provided greater mobility. (1991)

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.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 21 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 21 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 21 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.

More markers nearby

• John Tyson Smith — 0.3 mi
• Noted Texas Leader, Developer, Conservationist, Carl L. Estes — 0.4 mi
• Delta Drilling Company — 0.5 mi
• The Grove — 0.5 mi