The Railroad in Rusk County

The Handbook of Texas lists the lines behind the story. The Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad was finished between Galveston and Houston by January 1860, and the Civil War kept it from reaching Henderson. A line reached the county's northwest corner in 1872. The Caro Northern was built from Caro to Mount Enterprise in 1894, and the Timpson and Northwestern was completed between Timpson and Henderson in 1909. All this in a county that the 1860 census made the most populous in Texas, with 15,803 residents.

What the plaque says

The Railroad in Rusk County Although plans for a rail line were made as early as 1852, railroad tracks were not laid in this area until after the end of the Civil War. Overton (14 mi. NW) became the center of Rusk County Railroading after the international & great northern line came through in the 1870s. The Henderson-Overton branch railroad was completed in 1877. Several small lines were begun in the county during the early 1900s but were abandoned by the end of the 1920s. Passenger service declined throughout Texas after World War II, but rail freight continues to be an important business in Rusk County. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 10 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.
• East Texas Oil Museum — 16 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.
• Tex Ritter Museum and Texas Country Music Hall of Fame — 26 mi
  Carthage's country music museum, with Tex Ritter's boots, guitars and saddles in a room styled like a movie theater, and exhibits on other Texas stars, Jim Reeves among them.

More markers nearby

• Arnold Outhouse — steps away
• Rusk County Agriculture — steps away
• Henderson Depot — steps away
• East Texas Musical Convention — steps away