Old Bardwell

The newer Bardwell is the town with the highway story. The Handbook of Texas says the town's population peaked near 650 in 1929, with more than twenty-five businesses, three gins, two banks and a weekly paper called the Herald, and that residents built an open-air tabernacle for political meetings, revivals, traveling Chautauquas and summer singing. Telephones and electric power from Ennis arrived by 1914. The Depression and drought hurt, and when the main road moved to the new State Highway 34 in the early 1940s, most businesses closed or moved there. The school merged with Ennis in 1958.

What the plaque says

Old Bardwell In the 1880s, Ellis County emerged as a leading cotton producing county in the area. A community known as Pleasant Valley developed here, convenient for farmers transporting cotton by wagon. Pleasant Valley School was formed in 1882 to serve the families who had settled the area. Down the road from the school, Elijah Reynolds (1840-1911) sold a 2.75-acre lot to Labon Bonapart "Bonie" Freeman in 1883 along the Ennis to Milford Road (later State Highway 34). Freeman built a steam-powered cotton gin on site, In 1884, Elijah Reynolds sold his property to Isaac Allen (1832-1911), who sold several lots to form the nucleus of the town. John Ward Bardwell (1840-1921) of Ennis bought the Freeman Gin in 1892. The same year, the post office was established, and an official name for the town was needed. According to local tradition, Postmaster John Richard Roach (1845-1900) suggested Bardwell after the cotton gin owner. Bardwell himself never lived in Bardwell and owned the cotton gin for only one year, selling in 1894 to William Whittington and William Roach. Bardwell was on its way to becoming a thriving community with a church, cotton gin, general store, post office, blacksmiths and druggists. Bardwell had its own paper, the Bardwell Herald. When the railroad was built through Ellis County in 1907, it was built bypassing Bardwell by a half mile to the east. Town officials decided it was necessary to move the entire town to the railroad, beginning with the cotton gin and the Church of Christ. While the town prospered in its new location, Old Bardwell faded into history. The Bardwell Cotton Gin continued to operate in its new location for nearly 100 years before closing in 1983. (2021))

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 12 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 18 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Hill County Courthouse — 30 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.

More markers nearby

• Sand Lake — 1.7 mi
• Boren Cemetery — 4.3 mi
• Thomas C. Neel — 4.6 mi
• Frederick Harrison Rankin — 5.7 mi