Historic Walker County

Five miles further north and east, the Phelps-
Dodge company built a second stop called
Dodge in 1871. This also developed into a small
town with its own hotel, store, and school. A
post office was established in 1881, and within
a decade the population stood at some two
hundred people. The community added several
churches, cotton gins, and drugstores in the
first decade of the twentieth century, but it
remained a rural, agricultural settlement of less
than three hundred people. 45
Along with Dodge and Phelps, the railroad
established Riverside in 1872. This new
settlement sat in the northeastern corner of the
county on the Trinity River a short distance
from the old site at Newport. Cotton, lumber,
and stock raising were mainstays of the local
economy, and by 1900 the town had two
schools, three churches, two sawmills, two
hotels, and two general stores. The population
hovered between 100 and 300 for a long while,
until the local schools were consolidated into
the Huntsville system in the 1960s. Today, the
town has roughly five hundred residents. 46
T H E F O U N D I N G O F S A M
H O U S T O N N O R M A L
I N S T I T U T E , 1 8 7 9 - 1 8 8 1
At the end of the nineteenth century, the state
of Texas faced a looming crisis. Without a statefunded
public normal school for teachers,
private institutions like Huntsville’s Austin
College were left with the responsibility of
❖
Above: An 1896 advertisement from
The Texarkana Gateway to Texas
and the Southwest.
COURTESY OF THE EDITOR’S COLLECTION.
Right: In 1872 an eight-mile “tap
line” connecting Huntsville and Phelps
was completed.
COURTESY OF THE WALKER COUNTY
HISTORICAL COMMISSION.
2 2 ✦ H I S T O R I C W A L K E R C O U N T Y