Shiro, Texas

Everything Shiro is known for

1 song mention this city 2 artists from here

Music in Shiro

Songs About Shiro

232
Delaney Ann
20%
"I hit 232, those old railroad tracks"

Artists From Shiro

D
Delaney Ann
country
J
Jacob Austin Band
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Shiro

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

Kickapoo Creek 4 songs Interstate 45 8 songs Brazos River 42 songs Trinity River 11 songs

History of Shiro

Shiro, TX RoadyGoat

The town you're driving through today isn't the original. Imagine having to move your entire community—homes, businesses, and all—a few miles down the road. That's basically what happened here in 1902. The first settlement was a small farming community called Prairie Plains, located about three miles from here. Then word spread that the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway meant to run its line right through this spot. The railroad was the key to survival and prosperity, so the people of Prairie Plains didn't hesitate. They pulled up stakes and moved onto the railway's proposed route, betting on tracks that wouldn't be surveyed until 1905 or finished until 1908. The new town, born directly from the ambition of the railroad era, got its name from postmaster F.M. Mayfield, who plucked 'Shiro' from the botanical names in a nursery catalogue. This spot wasn't chosen for a river or a crossroads, but for its perfect alignment with the path of the iron horse.

Named for a plum in a catalogue RoadyGoat

The Shiro you see today wasn't born here. It was transplanted. The original settlement was Prairie Plains, a small farming outpost a few miles off. In 1902 its people picked up and moved to this spot, and the new town took a brand-new name: postmaster Frances Marion Mayfield chose Shiro out of the botanical listings in a nursery catalogue, a plum variety printed on a page. What they were moving toward was a bet, because the railroad wasn't here yet. The Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway wasn't surveyed through the townsite until 1905, and the line wasn't finished until 1908. The bet paid. By 1913 extensive stockyards lined the railroad siding and Shiro was a shipping point for cattle, cotton and produce; by 1924 it carried sixteen businesses. As you cross those tracks on the edge of town, remember the town got here first and waited.

RoadyGoat →

The Depot Was the Newspaper, the Telephone and the Ambulance RoadyGoat

To understand a railroad town you have to stop thinking of the depot as a building people used and start thinking of it as the building the town happened in. Shiro was laid out in 1902 and the trains came. By 1913 there were stockyards running the length of the siding and this place was shipping cattle and cotton out into the wider world. Here is what the depot actually meant. On a national election night, everybody in Shiro walked down to the station and stood around. Not for a party. They stood there because the result was going to come in over the telegraph wire to the station agent, and he was going to be the first person in this town to know who the president was. There was no other way to find out. You waited at the depot or you waited until tomorrow. And when somebody here got sick enough to need a hospital, there was no ambulance and no road worth driving. They put the patient on a cot, carried the cot into the baggage car, and the train took him to Houston. Same platform. Election returns, the sick, the cattle, the cotton and the mail, all of it moving through one siding in Grimes County. When people say the railroad built these towns, this is the specific thing they mean. The depot was the newspaper, the telephone, the ambulance and the highway all at once. When the trains stopped mattering, the town did not lose one thing. It lost four.

RoadyGoat →

Zuber, Abraham

1830

Abraham Zuber, carpenter, merchant, and pioneer farmer, the son of Abraham and Mary (Bartling) Zuber, was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1780. In 1786 the elder Zuber, son of a German immigrant, moved his family to Oglethorpe County, Georgia, where young Abraham began to practice carpentry. In 1814 the younger Zuber established a country store in Putnam County, Georgia, and the following year transferred his business to Marion, Georgia, where, on February 16, 1816, he married Mary Ann Mann, a native of South Carolina. They had two children. In 1822 Zuber moved to Montgomery County, Alabama; in 1824 to East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana; and in 1827 to St. Helena Parish, Louisiana. In 1830 he settled on the Ayish Bayou in the area that became San Augustine County, Texas. In 1831 he moved his family to Harrisburg while he searched for a headright tract in the Austin colony. In January 1832 he temporarily rented a farm in the Brazos bottoms that later became part of Brazoria County; he worked the farm with the aid of four slaves borrowed from Jared E. Groce . In January 1833 Zuber moved his family to a league of land on Lake Creek, then in Montgomery County, later eastern Grimes County, only to learn that much of another settler's headright had been inadvertently included in his survey. He thereupon laid claim to a league elsewhere in the Lake Creek bottoms-at the site of an abandoned Kickapoo Indian village near the site of present Shiro. His family occupied one of the two remaining sod cabins on the grounds, and the slaves occupied the other. Six years later he constructed a double-room log house on his property some two miles west of his original homestead. In March and April 1836 Zuber and his family participated in the Runaway Scrape . Upon returning to his farm, according to the report of his son, William Physick Zuber , he encountered a refugee from the Alamo, an old acquaintance named Louis Moses Rose , and received from him a dramatic eyewitness account of the fortress's fall. Zuber served as the first district clerk of Montgomery County after it was organized in 1837. He died on November 24, 1848, at his home in Grimes County.

Tsha Handbook →

Oakland Baptist Church

1854

Organized 1854. First pastor was George W. Baines, great grandfather of U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Congregation worshipped in school room till 1872 when present church was built. Church was moved to this site in 1913. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967

Historical Marker → · 3.9 mi away

Oakland Cemetery, Old

1838

Founded in 1867 in connection with the Oakland Baptist Church, which stood here until moved to Roans Prairie in 1913. Graves of many pioneers are located here. Oakland was once a popular way-station for the Bates and Black Stagecoach Lines, which ran from Austin to Huntsville until 1880. This road, known as Coushatta Trace, was originally a trail of the Coushatta Indians, a friendly tribe that hunted in this territory. In 1838, a Mrs. Taylor, the last known person killed by Indians in Grimes County, was murdered not far from this site.

Historical Marker → · 4.5 mi away

Anthony Drew Kennard

1835

Served in the Army of Texas 1835 Born in Tennessee July 9, 1788 Died in 1848 His wife Sallie Moore Kennard Born in Tennessee September 16, 1790 Died December 6, 1877. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Historical Marker →

Cedar Creek (Grimes County)

1687

Cedar Creek rises two miles northeast of Navasota in southwestern Grimes County (at 30°24' N, 96°03' W) and runs southwest six miles to its mouth on the Navasota River (at 30°24' N, 96°07' W). The surrounding gently sloping terrain is surfaced by clays that support narrow stands of post oak-blackjack oak and elm-hackberry timber on the banks of the creek's lower channel. On March 18, 1687, the French explorer René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle , was murdered by members of his own party near the confluence of Cedar Creek and the Navasota River as he searched for the Mississippi. Settlement in the vicinity of the stream began in 1826 when Georgia planter Daniel Arnold took up a one-league tract of land on the middle creek extending west to the Navasota River and called the area Cross Roads. In 1848 James Nolan erected tents and other temporary structures and began to cultivate cotton on a small tract on the banks of the creek where it was paralleled by the La Bahía Road . During the 1850s four different stage lines established stops in the settlement, which became known as Navasota, in the 1990s the largest town in Grimes County.

Tsha Handbook → · 7.7 mi away

Things to Do in Shiro

historical 19.5 mi away
The Explorer Who Died Lost

On March 19 1687 the French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle was walking through the bottomlands near the Navasota River when one of his own men…
quirky 19.6 mi away
The Blues Capital of Texas

Mance Lipscomb picked cotton all week and picked guitar all weekend on the farms outside Navasota for decades before anyone beyond Grimes County knew his name.…
spooky 23.5 mi away
Demon's Road & Martha Chapel Cemetery

Texas's most haunted road. An 1830s cemetery on Bowden Road near Huntsville where cars rock on their own and handprints appear on windows.
quirky 15.6 mi away
CForce Bottling (Chuck Norris Ranch)

Yes Chuck Norris owns a ranch right here outside Navasota and he uses it to bottle water. The Lone Wolf Ranch sits just east of town off Highway 105 and…
historical 19.5 mi away
The Summer Everything Died

In August 1867 yellow fever swept into Navasota and the town simply collapsed. Of three thousand residents more than half fled within days leaving the sick to…
historical 19.6 mi away
Birthplace Next Door

Just seven miles from Navasota sits Washington-on-the-Brazos where fifty-nine delegates signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2 1836. They did…
historical 19.6 mi away
The Night the Cotton Burned

In 1865 the Civil War was over but the chaos was not. A warehouse in Navasota packed with cotton bales and gunpowder exploded after Confederate veterans angry…
quirky 19.6 mi away
The Town Under Six Flags

Navasota sits near Washington-on-the-Brazos where the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed and that location gives it a claim few towns can match. All…

Everything Near Shiro

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

Explore Shiro on the Map
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