Zwolle Railroad Depot

A stock sale paid for this town's name. When Arthur Stilwell's Kansas City Southern ran short of money building toward the Gulf, Dutch investor Jan De Goeijen sold three million dollars of its stock and named the settlement for his hometown, Zwolle in the Netherlands. Teofilo Laroux gave the railroad 20 acres on July 14, 1896, and Paul M. Potts added 22.05 more that October. The first depot opened October 26, 1896, and the town was chartered June 12, 1898. The railroad made Zwolle a hub for lumber, oil and cotton.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• North Toledo Bend State Park — 6.6 mi
  A 900-acre park on the Louisiana shore of the 186,000-acre Toledo Bend Reservoir, with trails, disc golf and cabins, near the flooded sites of Pine Flat and other Sabine Parish communities.
• Fort Jesup State Historic Site — 14 mi
  The 1822 army post Zachary Taylor built to hold the Neutral Ground between Louisiana and Spanish Texas, with the one surviving kitchen, a reconstructed officers' quarters and a museum open Friday to Sunday.
• Red Hills Lake Recreation Area — 16 mi
  A 19-acre Sabine National Forest lake completed by the CCC in 1940 near Milam, a short drive from Toledo Bend Reservoir, with a swimming beach, fishing and camping from May through October.
• Los Adaes State Historic Site — 21 mi
  The Spanish presidio that was the capital of Texas from 1729 to 1770, some 15 miles from French Natchitoches, now an archaeological site where Native pottery is the most abundant find.

More markers nearby

• Early Spanish Missions — 1.0 mi
• Baldwin's Store — 10 mi
• Pendleton Crossing — 10 mi
• The History of Toledo Bend — 11 mi