Marion, Texas

Everything Marion is known for

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Music in Marion

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Drew Moreland
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Marion

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Marion.

Interstate 10 36 songs US Route 90 9 songs Guadalupe River 17 songs Interstate 35 43 songs San Antonio River 2 songs Chisholm Trail 8 songs

History of Marion

Two Marions, One Town Name RoadyGoat

The little railroad town you're rolling through carries a name with two competing origin stories, and the honest answer is that both have been told here for over a century. The official version, carried by the Handbook of Texas and the 1977 state historical marker, says Marion was named for Marion Dove, granddaughter of Joshua W. Young, who owned the plantation the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway cut across in 1877. But the railroad's own developer, Boston financier Colonel Thomas W. Peirce, laid out the townsite, and a strong local tradition holds that he named it for his own daughter, Marion Peirce. The San Antonio transportation historians who studied it shrug and say the answer is simply yes. There really was a Marion Dove, documented in the 1880s as a local schoolteacher who passed her state certification. So the town honors a planter's granddaughter, or a railroad baron's daughter, or maybe the lucky overlap of two young women who happened to share the same first name when the lots went up for sale. (Source: Handbook of Texas; Texas Transportation Museum.)

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From a Railroad Camp to a German Farm Town RoadyGoat

Before there was a town here, there was a camp. When the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway pushed its line across western Guadalupe County in the mid-1870s, the work crews threw up a temporary settlement beside the grade, near an existing country store and hotel. That camp became the seed of Marion. Town lots were auctioned off in June 1877, and the buyers who showed up were largely German farming families who moved over from an older settlement on nearby Santa Clara Creek. They brought the habits of the Texas Hill Country German belt with them: tight-knit churches, careful farming, and a butcher-and-sausage food culture that still lingers in town today. The railroad gave them a way to ship cotton and corn east to market, and the flat blackland fields around Marion gave them something worth shipping. Within a decade the railroad camp had grown into a real farming community with mills, gins, stores, a church, and a school, all strung along the tracks that brought everyone here in the first place. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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Two Gins, Two Mills, and a Cotton Economy RoadyGoat

For its first 70 years, Marion ran on cotton and corn. By the mid-1880s the young town already had steam, grist, and saw mills, two cotton gins, four general stores, a church, a district school, and about 250 residents, a remarkably complete little economy for a place barely a decade old. The two gins were the engine of it. Every fall, wagons of raw cotton rolled in from the surrounding German farms, the gins stripped the seed from the lint, and the baled cotton went straight onto the railroad that ran down the middle of town. Guadalupe County was serious farm country; in the late 1930s and early 1940s it ranked among the top corn-producing counties in all of Texas. Cotton and corn stayed the backbone of Marion's economy clear through the 1950s, when mechanization, falling cotton prices, and the slow drift of young people toward San Antonio jobs finally pulled the town away from the fields it had farmed since 1877. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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Founding of Town of Marion, 1877

1870

The Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway was chartered in 1870 to give interior Texas ready access to Gulf of Mexico ports. As the tracks proceeded west of the Guadalupe, Col. Thomas W. Peirce (1818-85), major investor in the G.H. & S.A., bought land here near a country store and hotel. Platting a town named for his daughter, he obtained a U.S. Post Office on May 31, 1877. A public sale of lots was held on June 20, 1877. Within a year, Marion's 3-acre railyard was known for vast quantities of shipping. By 1900, public school, churches, and other facilities were thriving. (1977)

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Herrington, Joseph

1846

Joseph Herrington, jurist, county official, and early Angelina County settler, was born on November 14, 1823, in Monroe County, Alabama, the son of William and Anne Herrington. In 1842 the family immigrated to the Republic of Texas and settled on Hanes Creek, twelve miles from Marion in Nacogdoches County. In 1846 the Texas legislature appointed Herrington and several others to survey the boundary line of the new Angelina County and to locate the county seat. In the first county election in July of that year, Herrington was elected chief justice of the county (i.e., county judge). Although only twenty-two at the time, he was made president of the county commissioners and played an important role in molding the county government and in overseeing construction of the first county courthouse in Marion. He was also instrumental in building county roads and in establishing the county school system. He served five terms as chief justice—1846–48, 1850–52, 1855–58, 1866–68, and 1880–84. He never married. He became a master Mason on November 2, 1850, and received the royal arch degree on September 15, 1851. He died on March 3, 1889, near Homer and was buried in the Herrington Cemetery, ten miles south of Huntington in Angelina County.

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Marion, TX (Angelina County)

1828

Marion, the first of four county seats of Angelina County, was north of State Highway 103 near the Angelina River and thirteen miles northeast of Lufkin, near present-day Marion Ferry Park. The town was known as McNeill's Landing as early as 1828 and was once the largest and most important town in Angelina County, serving as the northernmost steamboat stop on the Angelina River. From 1855 to about 1882 a regular steamboat service linked the town with Sabine Pass on the Neches River. Going south, the principal cargo was cotton; on the return trip the ships brought foodstuffs and other supplies. The town grew slowly; the census of 1850 listed 196 families for all of Angelina County. In 1846 the town became the county seat and was renamed Marion after Revolutionary War general Francis Marion. County officials and tradesmen made up most of the population of the town, which had a dry-goods store, a druggist, a smithy, several residences, and a two-story courthouse constructed of logs. The first post office in the county was established in Marion on March 8, 1847, with John D. Gann as the first postmaster. Marion remained the county seat until 1854, when county officials chose Jonesville, which was more centrally located. Marion continued to exist for several decades, however. With the arrival of the railroad in Angelina County in 1882 the steamboat service ceased. No longer the county seat or a steamboat stop, Marion went out of existence after 1899. By 1948 all that was left was a small log barn and a marker placed by the state of Texas in 1936.

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Marion State Bank

1906

The town of Marion began in the 1870s as a marketing and shipping point on the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio rail line. It grew steadily and, in the early twentieth century, began to develop as an important commercial center for the area. A cotton gin opened in 1904, followed soon by an electric plant and a telephone company. As part of that progress, Marion State Bank received a charter on October 26, 1906. H.D. Dreyer served as the first president, with Dr. Louis Hirschfeld as vice president and Henry Wimmer as cashier and secretary; all were directors. The other initial directors were L. Kuehler, W.J. Schneider and Arlon B. Davis. Marion State Bank began operation in the first floor rear area of the H.D. Dreyer building, which also housed the Waldorf Club, a local saloon. The bank purchased the property in 1910 and moved to the front part of the building. It remained at that site until 1987, when it relocated to new facilities here. Marion State Bank was among the first state chartered banks in Texas, and it remains one of the state’s oldest community-based financial institutions. Throughout its history, it has been a key player in area development, serving Marion and nearby communities Zuehl, New Berlin and Santa Clara. The institution has paid dividends regularly to its investors over the years, even during the Great Depression. Today, Marion State Bank serves as a reminder of the area’s early history, as well as its steady growth and development. As with its founding, the bank continues in service as a hometown institution. (2006)

Historical Marker →

Cibolo, TX (Guadalupe County)

1867

Cibolo is on Farm Road 78 and Cibolo Creek, sixteen miles west of Seguin in western Guadalupe County. Cíbolo is Spanish for "buffalo." The banks of Cibolo Creek are quite steep, and along its entire course, which is the boundary between Guadalupe and Bexar counties, there are few places where pioneers could find a safe crossing before the development of bridges. It is said that Indians stampeded buffalo over the banks to disable them so they could be slaughtered. Jacob Schlather bought land in the area in 1867, and his son George built a store to supply neighboring settlers, who were mostly German. The store was sold to Charles Fromme in 1882, and the settlement became known as Fromme's Store. When the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway built through the area in 1877 the station was called Cibolo Valley. A post office called Cibolo opened in 1883. By 1890 the community had a church, a cotton gin, a general store, and 100 residents. The Cibolo Valley school had one teacher and thirty-one students in 1904. O. Henry's ( see PORTER, WILLIAM SYDNEY ) story "The Smiling Valley of the Cibolo" was supposedly inspired by a visit to the area. In 1914 a second frame school building was constructed to accommodate the growing number of students. In 1916 the voters approved a bond for a new high school. The trustees, F. J. Werner, George Schlather, and Alfred Sahm, contracted for a two-story brick structure. The first graduates of Cibolo High School received their diplomas in 1920. The census of 1940 recorded a post office, a bank, nine businesses, and a population of 250. When the town was incorporated in 1968 the population was 398. The major economic influences on Cibolo have been Randolph Air Force Base and the expansion of San Antonio. In the 1980s Cibolo grew dramatically along Interstate Highway 35, and many housing developments were planned. The town reported 657 residents in 1988, 1,757 in 1990, and 3,035 in 2000.

Tsha Handbook → · 4.7 mi away

West End Park and Dance Hall

1947

Following his service in World War II, Felipe Delgado and his wife, Elisa Saenz Delgado, purchased a lot in 1947 in the West End Subdivision #2, determined to create an entertainment center for the Hispanic community. Felipe worked various jobs including civil service but devoted his spare time to working on the park. A concrete slab was poured for dances and events lit by lanterns and later a hall was built. The hall became a popular destination for concerts, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and quinceañeras. Lydia Mendoza, one of the best-known Spanish-language singers of the Texas-Mexico border region, performed at the West End Dance Hall to large crowds. At times, the concrete platform and the dance hall were converted for use as a skating rink or for boxing matches. Elisa made and sold hamburgers for attendees at dances and baseball games. A large outdoor area accommodated carnivals, picnics and celebrations, and a baseball field with a large grandstand encouraged the love of baseball in the New Braunfels Hispanic community. The West End team was called the Cardinals and later the Lions and played against other New Braunfels and surrounding city teams at the park, as well as teams from Mexico. One of the largest annual events in the park was Diez y Seis de Septiembre, a celebration of Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1810 that is observed throughout Texas. Hundreds of citizens and guests would gather in the park for music, food and festivities. The Delgados leased the property in the 1970s and the hall was torn down in the 1980s. Although the hall, cantina and baseball fields are no longer visible, the legacy of the West End Park remains in the community. (2016)

Historical Marker → · 8.1 mi away

Things to Do in Marion

historical 13.0 mi away
Gruene Hall

Gruene Hall opened in 1878 and has never closed its doors making it the oldest continuously operating dance hall in Texas. The wooden floor is scuffed smooth…
historical 23.1 mi away
The Alamo

In the spring of 1836 about two hundred Texas defenders held this old Spanish mission for thirteen days against a Mexican army of two thousand led by Santa…
nature 10.0 mi away
Comal Springs

Comal Springs in New Braunfels is the largest spring system in Texas -- more than two hundred and fifty individual vents pouring out three hundred million…
historical 11.7 mi away
Where George Strait Got His Start

Before George Strait was the King of Country he was a young singer playing regular gigs at Gruene Hall in the 1970s and 80s. The tiny dance hall with no air…
quirky 11.7 mi away
The Kayaker Who Saved a Ghost Town

In 1974 developers had plans to bulldoze what was left of Gruene and build suburban homes. Then a University of Texas architecture student named Chip Kaufman…
historical 11.7 mi away
Gruene Hall

Texas' oldest dance hall (1878). Still hosts live music every night.
historical 11.8 mi away
The Oldest Dance Hall in Texas

Gruene Hall was built in 1878 by a German cotton farmer named Henry D. Gruene and it has never stopped hosting dances. That makes it the oldest continuously…
nature 14.8 mi away
Bracken Cave

The largest bat colony on earth lives in this single sinkhole outside San Antonio -- somewhere between fifteen and twenty million Mexican free-tailed bats…

Everything Near Marion

494 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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