Old Boston

Wealthy planters with Red River plantations lived here by the Civil War, when Boston had perhaps 300 to 400 people, according to the Handbook of Texas. The post office opened in 1846 with L. D. Vandike as postmaster. Then the railway bypassed the town by four miles in 1876, merchants moved to New Boston, and Texarkana won the county seat in the mid-1880s. The 1890 courthouse went up 2.5 miles north, and the post office and the name Boston went with it. Old Boston fell to about 75 people in the early 1880s and 50 by decade's end.

What the plaque says

Old Boston Established while part of Mexico; to serve plantations on Red River. Mail came horseback from Arkansas. Named for W. J. Boston, first storekeeper. A battalion was formed here to fight in Texas Revolution. First Bowie County Seat, 1841. Large stores surrounded square and two-story brick courthouse. Became educational center with 3 fine private schools. Texas governors Hardin R. Runnels and S. W. T. Lanham have lived here. New Boston (4 mi. N) founded on railroad, 1877. Boston (1 mi. S), exact county center, made county seat 1890, and this became "Old" Boston. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Atlanta State Park — 15 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.
• Museum of Regional History — 22 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.

More markers nearby

• Arkadelphia Rosenwald School — 3.1 mi
• New Boston — 3.8 mi
• Bowie County — 4.8 mi
• Hooks — 8.1 mi