The Trinity River

Trinidad owes its name to a post office rule. The Handbook of Texas says the place was Trinity Switch when the Cotton Belt made it a station in 1880, but residents applying for a post office chose Trinidad to avoid duplicating another office, though the office may not have opened until 1891. The ferry was older: O. M. Airhart ran one across the Trinity here before 1840, and the river itself was first called the Trinidad. In the 1920s Texas Power and Light opened a plant on the river, and a fertilizer plant followed.

What the plaque says

The Trinity River Three main tributaries-- the West, Elm, and East forks-- feed the Trinity from headwaters in North Texas. Discovery of prehistoric Malakoff Man carved stone heads near this site in the 20th century revealed that humans inhabited the Trinity valley thousands of years ago. Indian villages dotted the river banks when European exploration began. French explorer robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle called this waterway the River of Canoes in 1687. Spaniard Alonso de Leon is credited with first using the name "Trinity" in 1690. The fertile Trinity floodplain drew Anglo-American settlers to this area during the Republic of Texas. Buffalo, first Henderson County Seat, was founded a few miles upstream at a ferry crossing. Navigation of the Trinity has been proposed in a number of ambitious plans since the 1850s. Steamboats plied the river carrying cotton, cattle, and lumber to Galveston and other Gulf of Mexico ports until the 1870s. Arrival of the railroad ended the era of riverboat trade. Founded in 1881 on the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad, also known as the Cotton Belt, the town of Trinidad had a pump station to draw water for the boilers of steam locomotives. A ferry crossed the Trinity here until a bridge was erected in 1900. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Purtis Creek State Park — 15 mi
  A 1,582-acre park straddling the Henderson and Van Zandt county line, built around a 355-acre lake with no-wake fishing, borrowed tackle, a 4.1-mile hike-and-bike trail and a nature path.
• Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center — 20 mi
  A Texas Parks and Wildlife hatchery and visitor center in Athens where visitors can borrow tackle and fish a stocked pond, watch native species in gallery tanks and ride a tram around the hatchery.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 22 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 32 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.

More markers nearby

• Malakoff Man — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Malakoff — 4.9 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Malakoff — 5.2 mi
• Rural Shade — 7.2 mi