Phalba

Phalba's name dates from a post office application. According to the Handbook of Texas, the settlement was Snider Springs until 1897, when residents applied for a post office and chose the name Phalba for a daughter of Joseph William Jordan, a local resident. The post office was discontinued in 1907 and mail went to Mabank, in Kaufman County. The Snider Springs school had 104 pupils in 1904 and joined the Canton district in 1950. In 1939 local sewing rooms made garments for the poor. The population was sixty-five in 1936, thirty in 1966 and fifty-eight in 2000.

What the plaque says

Phalba This community was first called Snider Springs for John Snider who bought the land on which the springs were situated in 1853. A road, later designated State Highway 198, opened from Canton to Snider Springs in 1858, and the town soon boasted several businesses. Citizens changed the town name to Phalba after the daughter of a local gin owner because another Texas postal station was already called Snider Springs. During the Depression, the Works Progress Administration opened a cannery for local and charitable uses. It used the water from the springs for five steam-operated canners. Though it suffered neglect in the years following World War II, the rural farming and ranching area of Phalba continues as a thriving small community. (1999) Incise on base: Historian Donald and Annette Plemmons

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Purtis Creek State Park — 4.9 mi
  A 1,582-acre park straddling the Henderson and Van Zandt county line, built around a 355-acre lake with no-wake fishing, borrowed tackle, a 4.1-mile hike-and-bike trail and a nature path.
• Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center — 19 mi
  A Texas Parks and Wildlife hatchery and visitor center in Athens where visitors can borrow tackle and fish a stocked pond, watch native species in gallery tanks and ride a tram around the hatchery.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 27 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.

More markers nearby

• Elm Grove Cemetery — 3.6 mi
• Goshen Cemetery — 5.1 mi
• Cool Springs (Tundra) — 7.5 mi
• Ham (Pauline) — 7.7 mi