Town of Tatum

The Handbook of Texas ties the town's start to the Santa Fe line, built through the region in 1885, after which a townsite was divided into lots. A post office opened in 1886 with Paul Tatum, who had laid out the streets, as postmaster. A bank followed in 1903. A tornado in 1904 destroyed part of the town, and a fire in 1905 razed nearly all of the north side. Tatum had 154 people in 1904 and 428 in 1925. It stands on the Rusk-Panola county line, which follows part of Trammel's Trace.

What the plaque says

Town of Tatum Wealthy Alabama native Albert Tatum (1810-1870) settled here at Trammel's Trace and Grand Bluff Road crossing in the 1840s. Slave labor built Tatum's plantation home, a social center for the area. His wife Mary gave land and a station in 1882 for Longview & Sabine Valley Railroad, later part of the Santa Fe system. In 1892 Tatum's son Paul (1848-1914), known as "Uncle Fox," donated land and laid out the townsite. Farming and lumbering became the main industries. The formation in 1971 of Martin's Creek Lake and an electrical generating plant brought rapid growth. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tex Ritter Museum and Texas Country Music Hall of Fame — 15 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.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 18 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 18 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 18 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.

More markers nearby

• Harmony Hill Cemetery — 3.8 mi
• Sugar Hill Cemetery — 7.5 mi
• Isaac R. Youngblood — 8.1 mi
• Grand Bluff Cemetery — 11 mi