Old Hardin

Old Hardin faded in stages. Texas Escapes reports a post office by 1860 and about 150 people in 1878, when the courthouse was one of several buildings. In 1884 the town defeated a push to move the county seat to Kountze; the Handbook of Texas says that effort failed by eleven votes. After the courthouse burned and the seat moved, just over 100 residents remained by 1900, and the post office closed in 1903. A painting of its log courthouse hangs in the lobby of the courthouse in Kountze.

What the plaque says

Old Hardin Founded 1859 as first county seat of Hardin County, created in 1858. Prospered until bypassed by Sabine & East Texas Railroad in 1881. A fire of suspicious origin razed the Courthouse here on Aug. 8, 1886. In an 1887 election, Kountze, on the railroad, was named the county seat. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Big Thicket National Preserve — 7.9 mi
  Start at the Kountze visitor center, where rangers sort the preserve's scattered units for you, and learn why Congress made this 1974 string of pearls the country's first national preserve.
• Village Creek State Park — 13 mi
  A 2,466-acre state park on one of the few free-flowing creeks in Texas, with a launch for the Village Creek Paddling Trail, boat rentals and sandy-upland trails in the Big Thicket.
• McFaddin-Ward House — 23 mi
  A Beaux-Arts Colonial Revival mansion finished in 1906 and lived in by one family for 75 years, with free guided tours of three furnished floors, the carriage house and gardens.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 27 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• Hardin County — 2.2 mi
• Courthouses of Hardin County — 2.4 mi
• General Braxton Bragg, C. S. A. — 2.4 mi
• Richard E. Jackson — 7.9 mi