Sanger and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway

The first family to settle in Sanger, the F. M. Ready family, arrived in October 1887, the same year the first engine and caboose rolled in. For decades the town depended on the railroad for markets. When the original line declined, a state highway to Dallas, begun in 1919 and reaching Sanger in 1920, helped make up the loss. The Handbook of Texas says the black, waxy soil grows wheat, oats, maize, millet and cotton, and horse farms around town breed and train registered stock. Sanger's cattle country and its wheat both rode the same tracks.

What the plaque says

Sanger and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway Sanger originated in 1886 at mile post 392.16 as a water stop along the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway Route leading north from Fort Worth to Purcell, Indian territory (now Oklahoma). The stop's proximity to north Denton county cattle ranches and to the Chisholm Trail led the railroad to construct a side track, cattle pens, loading chute and depot. Mrs. Elizabeth Bullock Huling, who had sold the property for the railroad stop, soon hired surveyors to plat a townsite surrounding it. Mrs. Huling donated land for a wagon yard, well, school, town square, cemetery and methodist church. A saloon, blacksmith shop and the ready hotel, which housed the first post office, opened shortly after. The town, originally known as Huling, and later New Bolivar, was officially named in honor of Sanger Brothers, a prominent Texas dry goods firm. The town was incorporated in 1892. When an 1890 fire destroyed much of sanger, the railroad rebuilt expanded facilities. The 1897 establishment of the Sanger Mill and elevator company, home of silk finish flour, helped to transition Sanger to a farming community. Cattle continued to drive the economy until two meat packing plants were built in Fort Worth ca. 1900, and ranchers began trucking cattle to market. World War II increased rail traffic at the depot and operations were taken over by women as men went to war. Although passenger rail service later ended, the town of Sanger, which got its start as a railroad water stop, continues to grow and prosper. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 10 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.
• Great Hanging Memorial — 18 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Wise County Courthouse — 26 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 31 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.

More markers nearby

• Bolivar, Townsite of — 4.4 mi
• City of Krum — 7.9 mi
• University Gardens, Texas Woman's University — 9.5 mi
• The First Building of Texas Woman's University — 9.8 mi