Naples

Belden was the name first used here, and the post office became Station Belden in 1882, apparently because Belden might be confused with Belton in Bell County. Residents chose Naples in 1895. The town counted 350 people in 1884 and 750 in 1890, then built a lumber trade, with a narrow-gauge railroad hauling hardwood logs to its sawmills, and incorporated in 1919. The population reached 1,500 in 1929 and had fallen to 843 by 1933.

What the plaque says

Naples When railroad by-passed prosperous town of Wheatville (3 mi. N), this rival town emerged at railroad. Post office moved here Jan. 1882, and was called Station Belden. Name was changed to Naples by U. S. Post Office Department, Feb. 1895. With depletion of hardwood forests, economy returned to cattle and agriculture. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Daingerfield State Park — 13 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• Atlanta State Park — 25 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.
• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 26 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.

More markers nearby

• Hometown of United States Senator Morris Sheppard — 0.3 mi
• Wheatville and Wheatville Cemetery — 2.0 mi
• Rocky Branch — 6.4 mi
• Cornett Cemetery — 7.8 mi