Historical Marker
Site of Old Town and Post Office of Weldon
Weldon, Houston County · Texas
Erected 1978
Weldon's businesses by 1885 included several steam sawmills and gristmills, a cotton gin, two general stores, a drugstore and a meat market, with an estimated 150 people, the Handbook of Texas reports. A school had opened in the late 1870s or early 1880s, and the town became a regional lumbering center after the Waco, Beaumont, Trinity and Sabine Railway was extended to it in the late 1880s. Population reached about 200 by the early 1930s, dropped to eighty by 1950 as residents left after World War II, and stood at 131 in 1990.
What the plaque says
Site of Old Town and Post Office of Weldon In 1850 William Morrow built a cotton gin about a mile north of here, opening a settlement. An early post office in the vicinity was renamed Weldon in 1869, for Weldon Jones Murchison (1838-99), a local pioneer merchant. Local economy was based on cotton and timber. Trains hauled logs over a tram road to mills in Trinity (15 miles east) by 1900. Town moved south in 1911, when Beaumont & Great Northern Railway reached this point. The East Texas Development Company platted the new townsite, which prospered in spite of disastrous fires in 1926 and 1927. Weldon post office closed Sept. 3, 1976. (1978)
Where it stands
31.02291, -95.57026 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Fort Boggy State Park — 27 miA 1,847-acre park in Leon County named for a settlers' palisade of 1840, with a 15-acre lake, short trails and the story of Tennessee farmers, the Keechi and a Ranger captain.
More markers nearby
- Site of Volga Community — 3.0 mi
- Eastham Prison Farm — 4.0 mi
- Antioch Cemetery — 6.4 mi
- Robbins Ferry — 8.6 mi