Point Pleasant

The Handbook of Texas says residents of St. Clair and Point Pleasant moved to Gladewater after the Texas and Pacific made it the area's only mail stop. Gregg County's TXGenWeb history adds that William Walters's first house, beside the old stage stop, still stands inside a barn. It says the Point Pleasant post office closed on October 17, 1870 and that about 48 families received mail there. Clarksville City later grew on the site, incorporating by a vote of September 14, 1956 under its first mayor, L. W. Pelphrey.

What the plaque says

Point Pleasant From about 1850 until 1871, a post office, which served the Point Pleasant community, operated near this site. The area was known as Gilead under the first postmaster, L. B. Camp, who earlier had established a ferry crossing the Sabine River (2 mi. W). when the name Point Pleasant was adopted in 1852, J. K.Armstrong (d. 1860) was named postmaster. Other postmasters who served Point Pleasant were William W. Walters (d. 1885), who operated the stage stop where the post office was located, Claiborn Halbert, and Joshua W. Monk. Elisha A. Mackey was Point Pleasant's last official postmaster. During its 21 years of existence the Point Pleasant Post Office served approximately 48 families including those of Jarret Dean, James Hendrick, Mason Moseley, Augustus Moseley, A. H. Abney, A. C. Williams, Jacob M. Lacy, A. G. Rogers, and A. T. Wright. The Point Pleasant School (called Possom Trot and still operating in 1908 with Trustees R. A. Hendrix, E. W. Clements, and Mr. Phillips) and Moseley Cemetery also served these pioneers. When the railroad came through in 1873, the new towns of Gladewater and Longview drew residents away from the Point Pleasant area. Clarksville City, created by the 1931 East Texas oil boom, later developed at the site of the Point Pleasant community. Incise on back: In memory of our mother Minnie Clements Phillips (1892-1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 11 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 20 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Tyler State Park — 23 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 23 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.

More markers nearby

• Rosedale Cemetery — 1.8 mi
• White Oak Independent School District — 2.2 mi
• Cherokee Trace — 2.3 mi
• John Ben Shepperd — 2.7 mi