Name: Joshua, Texas
Address: Joshua, TX

Joshua, TX RoadyGoat

Once a thriving town, Caddo Grove missed out on the railroad boom, leading to the rise of Joshua. The station, originally called 'Caddo Peak', was renamed 'Joshua' after the biblical figure. The town blossomed with the arrival of the railroad in 1881, growing to have a population of 300 by 1890, complete with mills, a hotel, and a newspaper. Despite suffering major fires in 1900 and 1912, Joshua continued to grow, with the first car purchased in 1913 and interurban rail service starting in 1912. The town incorporated in the mid-1950s, and its population has grown significantly due to its proximity to Fort Worth.

The Station the Railroad Named After a Bible Story RoadyGoat

The town you're rolling through almost wasn't here, and the town that should have been is two miles west, gone. That was Caddo Grove, a thriving little settlement near the Chisholm Trail until the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway pushed its line from Cleburne to Fort Worth in 1881 and laid the tracks right past it. Railroads made towns and unmade them just by where they chose to stop, and the depot went up on open land instead, on a section first patented by W. W. Byers back in 1867 and sold to John Powell in 1874. The railroad first called the new station Caddo Peak, after the sandstone hill nearby, but the post office balked because Texas already had a Caddo Peak. So a name was chosen, purportedly by a local, Dr. D. B. McMillan, who reached for the Bible and landed on Joshua. The plat was surveyed in 1880, the community organized in 1881, and Caddo Grove's post office shut down by 1883. A whole town traded places, all because of where a steam engine stopped for water. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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When the Whole Town Ran on Cotton and Corn RoadyGoat

For its first half-century, Joshua lived and died by what the Santa Fe hauled out of town. The first store opened in 1882 under W. L. West, who doubled as the first postmaster, and the depot beside the tracks turned into the town's cash register. Surrounding the depot were truck gardens, orchards, and corn and cotton farms, and farm produce became Joshua's largest export, loaded onto railcars bound for bigger markets. By 1890 the place had grown to 300 people with two steam-powered corn mills and cotton gins, a hotel, a general store, and its own newspaper, the Johnson County Record. The cotton economy pulled in the things cotton towns needed: the Citizen's Banking Company opened in 1904 under J. W. Spencer, a public water system arrived in 1906, and an ice plant was running by 1914, when the population hit 824 with two cotton gins and a paper called the Joshua Star. Every bale and bushel that built early Joshua passed through the gin and onto the rails. Take away the depot and the cotton, and there's no town here at all. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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Union Hill Presbyterian Church and Cemetery

1879

Settlement in this area began in the early 1850s. By the 1870s Union Hill had developed into a small rural community of families primarily engaged in cotton farming. In 1879 a presbyterian congregation was organized in Union Hill through the efforts of the Rev. J. S. Davenport. The congregation erected a one-room church building at this site in 1880. In 1882 W. P. and Miley Johnson deeded five acres here to Union Hill Church trustees T. E. Wilshire, C. G. Witherspoon, and J. L. Shipley for church and cemetery purposes. The first recorded burial was that of Margaret Beatty on February 4, 1883. Among those buried here are area pioneers and their descendants and several veterans of the Civil War. A tabernacle was built in 1925 and in 1938 the graveyard was improved with the building of a fence with an arched gateway. A cemetery association was formed in 1983 and in 1992 a new tabernacle was constructed. Gatherings on December 24th for a Christmas Eve program and in June for a picnic are two special activities initiated by the congregation in the 1890s which have become traditional annual events. The church and cemetery continue to provide spiritual guidance and burial sites for the community.

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Marystown Cemetery

1853

MARYSTOWN CEMETERY FAMILIES MOVED TO THIS AREA IN THE 1850s, SETTLING AMONG THE BEAUTIFUL TREES SURROUNDING QUIL MILLER CREEK AND ITS SPRINGS WHICH RAN ALMOST YEAR-ROUND. ONE OF THE EARLIEST SETTLERS, CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER J. S. WILSHIRE, FARMED WITH HIS WIFE AND SEVEN CHILDREN BY 1853. IN 1869, THOMAS W. HOLLINGSWORTH OPENED A MILL AND A LARGE MERCANTILE STORE. THE TOWN WAS NAMED MARYSVILLE FOR HIS WIFE, MARY, THE COMMUNITY’S FIRST SCHOOLTEACHER, WHO TAUGHT IN HER HOME JUST WEST OF THE CEMETERY. A POST OFFICE OPERATED FROM 1874-1901 WITH THE NAME OF MARYSTOWN, SINCE TEXAS ALREADY HAD A MARYSVILLE. ONLY THE BAPTIST CHURCH AND CEMETERY REMAIN FROM THE HISTORIC SETTLEMENT. MARYSTOWN CEMETERY COVERS MORE THAN TWO ACRES OF THE 1859 SURVEY OF ISAAC A. JACKSON. ABOUT 1860, HE SET ASIDE THE LAND FOR USE AS A CEMETERY WHEN HE BURIED A FAMILY MEMBER WHOSE GRAVE IS NOW UNKNOWN. THE OLDEST MARKED GRAVE IS FOR MARTHA JANE (LEDBETTER) WARE, WHO DIED ON MARCH 13, 1864. ABOUT 15 BURIALS ARE DIPHTHERIA VICTIMS FROM A PASSING 1870s WAGON TRAIN. PIONEER SETTLERS BURIED HERE INCLUDE ISAAC AND FANNIE JACKSON, THOMAS AND MARY HOLLINGSWORTH, AND ROBERT AND WILLIAM BILLINGSLEY, TWO SIGNERS OF THE 1854 PETITION TO CREATE JOHNSON COUNTY. MANY VETERANS OF U.S. MILITARY CONFLICTS DATING TO THE CIVIL WAR ARE INTERRED HERE. SEVERAL HEADSTONES DEPICT FRATERNAL ASSOCIATIONS INCLUDING WOODMEN OF THE WORLD AND MASONS. THE GENERAL LANDSCAPE IS TRADITIONAL IN NATURE. ENTRANCE IS THROUGH A HISTORIC WROUGHT IRON ARCH GATE. FAMILY PLOTS ARE MOSTLY CURBED OR FENCED. THE MARYSTOWN CEMETERY ASSOCIATION FORMED IN 1987 TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE AND OVERSIGHT OF THIS HISTORIC BURIAL GROUND AND ITS GRAVES WHICH PROVIDE A RECORD OF AREA FAMILIES AND A PIONEER RURAL COMMUNITY.

Historical Marker → · 4.0 mi away

Arnold, Oliver Perry

1847

An officer noted for integrity. Born in South Carolina. Came to Texas 1847, and engaged in livestock and mercantile business. Spent six years seeking gold in California. Returned to Johnson County, 1859; joined Co. H, Young's regiment, 1861. Served with distinction as Sheriff of Johnson County, 1870-1876. Married Abigail Winchester; they had 12 children. Arnold was the first president, Johnson County Park and Fair Association.

Historical Marker → · 4.1 mi away

Cross Timber, TX

1853

There have been two similarly-named communities located in northern Johnson County. The settlement of Cross Timbers was named for its location on the edge of the western Cross Timbers . The town was settled about 1853, and a post office opened there in 1870. By 1885 the community reported a population of 100, a school and church, and several businesses, including a cotton gin and gristmill. In 1890 Cross Timbers reported a population of 200. Though in 1896 the community school had one teacher with twenty-five students, by 1900 the school apparently no longer existed. Both the Missouri, Kansas and Texas and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe lines bypassed the settlement in the 1880s. The Cross Timbers post office closed in 1904, and by 1910 the original community had apparently ceased to exist. The town of Cross Timber is located about ten miles north of Cleburne between State Highway 174 and Farm Road 731. This community took its name from the Cross Timber Farm in the area, and it incorporated in May 1991. City government consists of a mayor and five aldermen. A number of businesses operate in Cross Timber, and the city uses the fire department services of nearby Briaroaks. In 2000 the population was 277.

Tsha Handbook → · 3.9 mi away

Rodgers, Floyd H. [Slats]

1912

Floyd H. (Slats) Rodgers, aviation pioneer, was born in Tunnel Hill, Georgia, on March 7, 1889, the son of Charlie and Alice (Russell) Rodgers. He moved with the family to Keene, Texas, and after a brief education moved to the farm of an uncle near Waco. At the age of eighteen he applied for employment with the railroad; he advanced to locomotive engineer on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe in 1915. That same year he married Rosie Oliver; they had four children and were later divorced. Rodgers's boyhood experience with kites evolved into an avid interest in flying. Largely self-taught, he began to read extensively about planes. He first built a model plane that he put on display, and soon decided to build a larger version. With the help of John C. Fine, an engineer he met working on the Santa Fe, Rodgers designed and built a primitive aircraft, reputed to be the first built in Texas, which he flew without instruction in late 1912, a mere nine years after the first manned airplane flight by the Wright brothers. Because of a persistent droop in one wing Rodgers called the plane Old Soggy No. 1; he retired it in 1913. He became a civilian flight instructor for the army in 1916 and went on to fly army-surplus Jennies and Canucks as a barnstormer and circus stunt pilot after World War I . During prohibition he bought his own plane to ferry bootleg liquor from Mexico to Texas. He was involved in gambling and moonshining operations and eventually served six months in a Dallas jail for his illegal activities. After prohibition, as livelihood from barnstorming waned, he turned to crop dusting in the lower Rio Grande valley. On special charter requests he would sometimes shock his passenger with unforgettable aerial performances. He was a check pilot for Civilian Pilot Training just before World War II . Although his flight career extended to his later years, his flamboyant lifestyle and penchant for the illegal was increasingly limited by rules and regulations of the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Rodgers coauthored an autobiography, Old Soggy No. 1 (1954), in which he preserves the uninhibited character of the first three decades of aviation and reveals his own uniqueness. Bootlegging and flying stunts made him famous among the aviators and law-enforcement officers within the range of Love Field in Dallas as well as later in the lower Rio Grande valley. He performed the aviation heroics attendant upon early flight, including such incidents as surviving a crash after the motor had fallen off, safely landing a fabric-covered aircraft with one side in flames, having the first pilot's license in Texas and being the first to have it revoked, and landing safely at night after being blinded by lighted fireworks mounted on his plane. After his second marriage, Rodgers bought a 400–500 acre ranch in Bandera and opened a steakhouse. He subsequently sold out and moved to McAllen, opened another steakhouse, and ran a fisherman's camp in nearby Zapata. Slats Rodgers died on July 5, 1956, in McAllen and was buried at Laurel Hills Cemetery in Mission.

Tsha Handbook → · 5.9 mi away

Joshua, Texas

Music in Joshua

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History of Joshua