Site of Old Town Paradise

New Paradise grew fast once it moved. The Handbook of Texas says the town shifted a mile northeast in 1893 to meet the Rock Island line, and by 1900 it had two cotton gins, two lumberyards, two hotels, a grade school and a weekly paper, the Paradise Echo. The population held between 300 and 500 from 1900 into the 1940s. The Handbook credits Bill Anderson with opening the first general store in the early 1870s, and says the community was first called Eldorado before postal authorities pointed out the name was taken. Its post office branch dated from 1876.

What the plaque says

Site of Old Town Paradise SITE OF OLD TOWN PARADISE PARADISE IS A SMALL INCORPORATED TOWN WITH A POPULATION JUST SHORT OF 500 AND LOCATED IN SOUTH CENTRAL WISE COUNTY. ONE OF THE EARLIEST SETTLERS IN WISE COUNTY WAS O. H. P. READ, WHO MADE HIS HOME HERE IN 1858. MANY PIONEERS BEGAN MOVING TO THE AREA, INITIALLY CALLED ELDORADO. WILLIAM M. ANDERSON OPENED A GENERAL STORE, AND SOON AFTER, OTHER BUSINESSES SPRANG UP TO SERVE THE COMMUNITY. A TOWN SQUARE WAS DESIGNED BY LOCAL SURVEYOR BEN BANKS, AND A WATER WELL WAS DUG ON THE SOUTHEAST CORNER OF THE SQUARE. IN 1876, ELDORADO RECEIVED THE RIGHTS TO HAVE A POST OFFICE, BUT BECAUSE ANOTHER TOWN HAD CLAIMED THE RIGHTS TO THE NAME, IT CHANGED ITS NAME TO PARADISE PRAIRIE, LATER SHORTENED TO PARADISE. IN 1892, THE CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND & TEXAS RAILWAY BUILT A LINE FROM MONTAGUE COUNTY SOUTH TO WEATHERFORD IN PARKER COUNTY. THE RAIL LINE RAN THROUGH WISE COUNTY AND CAME WITHIN ONE MILE OF PARADISE. THE RAILROAD WAS A PROFOUND INFLUENCE ON THE SURROUNDING TOWNS. BECAUSE OF THE SHORT DISTANCE TO THE RAILROAD, RESIDENCES AND BUSINESSES BEGAN MOVING NORTHEASTWARD TO BE CLOSER TO THE LINE. BY THE EARLY 1900s, "NEW" PARADISE WAS WELL UNDER WAY WITH CHURCHES, HOTELS, A NEW CITY WELL AND SHOPS. BY 1927, MANY OF THE COTTON CROPS HAD BEEN DESTROYED AND "OLD" PARADISE CAME TO AN END. THE ONLY REMAINING STRUCTURE IN OLD TOWN PARADISE IS A PRIVATE HOME BUILT BY CONFEDERATE LIEUTENANT WILLIAM HALL JAY, WHO IS BURIED IN THE PARADISE CEMETERY. THE HOME SITS ON A CORNER JUST SOUTH OF THE OLD TOWN SQUARE AND IS A CONSTANT REMINDER OF AN EARLIER TIME. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wise County Courthouse — 9.0 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.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 27 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.
• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 30 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 32 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Dr. M. W. Matthews — 0.7 mi
• Hunt, Col. William Hudson — 5.1 mi
• Cottondale — 5.3 mi
• "Machine Gun" Kelley — 5.4 mi