Pioneer Settlers of Coltharp

Texas Escapes credits a storeowner and mill operator, Eli Coltharp, with founding the community before the Civil War, and says its post office ran from 1857 to 1909. In the 1880s it shipped cotton by water rather than rail and had several gins, sawmills and gristmills, about 150 people and a school built in 1887. Businesses fell from thirteen in 1884 to two by the mid-1890s, and the 1900 census counted 113. Students went to Kennard in 1925, and by 1946 the town no longer appeared on the county map.

What the plaque says

Pioneer Settlers of Coltharp One of Houston County's important early communities, Coltharp was settled at this site in the 1850s. Pioneer settlers included Eli and Eliza Jane Coltharp, William and Rhodey Conner, Jacob and Rhoda Gregg, Silas and Sarah Gregg, L.B. (Brice) and Frances Conner John, and Thomas J. Payne. A frame schoolhouse and masonic lodge hall, a church, and numerous stores and houses once stood at this site. The economy turned from cotton and corn to timber in the late 1880s. Bypassed by the railroad, Coltharp declined by 1925 as residents left for nearby sawmill towns. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 16 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.

More markers nearby

• Allen Chapel Community — 0.8 mi
• Antioch Cemetery — 1.0 mi
• Hagerville Community — 1.2 mi
• Four C Mill — 1.4 mi