Where is this? This unidentified photo of a North Texas depot is among the archives of The Sherman Museum. If you know where it is, you can contact the Museum by phone at 903-893-7683 or by email on the web site at theshermanmuseum.org and name it! The first person to name the depot will receive a free one-year membership to the Sherman Museum. The photo currently is on display.
Wedged in time between the Overland Stage and today’s DART, the trains and interurban railways of North Texas provided more than a physical link between Sherman-Denison and Dallas. They were instrumental in the growth and prosperity of the area, the naming of our towns and the social life of half a century of our residents. The Sherman Museum has currently joined forces with the Red River Railroad Museum of Denison and the Interurban Railway Museum of Plano to bring this story to life.
The History:
An interurban was a type of electric passenger railroad car, a hybrid of a streetcar and a train, popular in the early 1900s. It ran on tracks with electric cables on city streets, then on traditional-looking tracks fed by suspended electric cables in rural areas. Until the early 1920s, most roads were unpaved. The interurban provided a new, cheap, predictable, durable, and comfortable way to travel, to speed mail delivery, to deliver farm products including fresh milk to town, and generally to connect a rural population with a nearby city. Interurbans specifically offered passenger service between rural areas and the steam railroad services of urban centers.
In 1901, the Denison and Sherman Railway Co. established the first interurban railway line in Texas by opening a 10.5-mile track connecting the two cities. The second, in 1902, was the Northern Texas Traction Co. (NTT), which ran 35 miles between Dallas and Fort Worth. By 1908, the NTT connected the Denison-Sherman line to Dallas with 65 miles of track and continued to merger with other companies to become the Texas Electric Railway (TER). Soon the electric interurban industry in Texas would total nearly 500 miles, the second largest west of the Mississippi River, and the TER would compose nearly half of those miles.
About the Trains:
An interurban railway car was billed as “a marvel of luxury” that could be enjoyed for a nickel. (Fares later rose to 35 cents.) Carpeting, stained glass, restrooms, and plush or leather seats similar to recliners were often featured. The trains were powered by overhead electric cables carrying 550 to 600 volts, propelling them at 60 to 70 miles per hour, but a Dallas-Waco trip could take three hours due to frequent stops.
Mailboxes posted along the routes allowed residents to flag down trains for daily mail service. As a result, a letter posted in Denison in the morning could be delivered in Dallas that afternoon. At one time, two postal service employees cancelled and sorted mail in a rail car on the route to assure timely mail delivery.
Merchandise delivery was offered twice a day to the entire route served, a unique concept. The TER did not develop freight services until the late 1920s, but once it did, it earned substantial profits from freight. During World War II it grossed more than $2 million annually. Interurbans carrying freight were typically the last to disappear, as they were not dependent on passenger usage.
The Impact:
Financial, agricultural and commercial development boomed following the route of the rails.
Wood Lake, located midway between Denison and Sherman, literally was created by the interurban, both to sustain the railway and to provide a tourist attraction that would increase ridership and thus, make the interurban profitable. The Denison-Sherman Interurban needed power to operate, so it constructed a power plant, offices and a car barn. To provide water for the plant, the company built a dam on Tanyard Springs, forming Wood Lake. Then recreational facilities were added.
Obvious attractions like boating, swimming, fishing, and picnicking were offered, but Wood Lake boasted a zoo, an open-air dance pavilion, a penny arcade, carnival rides, a flume and a baseball diamond. A 20,000 square-foot Victorian casino accommodated 900 people offering Vaudeville-type shows and plays. It drew thousands of tourists to the area.
The Decline:
As highways improved and private car ownership increased, interurban ridership declined until it was abandoned in 1948. Being regional and local in nature, interurbans simply could not compete with the automobile. The fate of the Denison-Sherman line, however, was sealed after a series of three serious accidents. In two separate incidents, pedestrians crossing the tracks were struck and killed. The worst accident occurred in April 1948 when a motorman on a northbound train near Vickery misunderstood directions and did not exit the main track. It crashed head-on into a southbound train. No one was killed, but fearing lawsuits, the stockholders folded the company.
Today, though, the idea of interurban railroads is making a comeback in the form of light rail transit systems as commuters look for alternatives to increasingly crowded highways.
How Our Cities Got Their Names:
HOWE: The depot, the store and the post office were named Howe in 1876 after F. M. Howe, who worked for the Houston and Texas Central Railway. Howe had three saloons until early 1900 when the town voted to go dry.
VAN ALSTYNE: In 1872, many area residents purchased land from the Houston and Texas Central Railway railroad company and laid out a townsite. They named the new community Van Alstyne, after either William A. Van Alstyne, a civil engineer with the railroad who surveyed the right-of-way and the town, or Mrs. Marie Van Alstyne, a shareholder in the railroad company. The community opened a post office in 1873 and grew rapidly for the rest of the century.
ANNA: Some historians state the community was named after the daughter of settler John F. Greer who arrived in 1867 and is credited with building the first home and store. His daughter, Anna, married George Quinlan, a former superintendent of the Houston and Texas Central. Their daughter also was named Anna. A final story attributes the name to Anna Huntington, daughter of C. P. Huntington, who built the Dallas-Denison railroad line.
MELISSA: The town was laid out in 1872, when the Houston and Texas Central Railway reached the area and is named either for another daughter of George A. Quinlan, an official of the railroad, or for the daughter of C. P. Huntington, a prominent railroad executive, or both.
DENISON: This town was laid out in the summer of 1872 and named for the vice president of the Katy Railroad, George Denison. The first train arrived on Christmas Eve. The town had over 3,000 residents by the summer of 1873, when it incorporated. Although Main Street appeared to be an orderly collection of businesses, the surrounding area consisted of a tent city with bars, gambling halls and houses of prostitution.
CUTLINE FOR MAP: By 1917, the Texas Electric Railway operated 226 miles of track from Denison through Dallas and on to Waco and Corsicana, also serving rural areas of Cleburne, Denton and Terrell. It was the largest interurban railway in the South. The Dallas-Corsicana branch was discontinued in 1941, and the Dallas-Waco and Dallas-Denison branches in 1948.
“Tracks: The Railroads and Interurbans of North Texas”
The new exhibit, “Tracks,” at The Sherman Museum, is a collaborative effort featuring a larger-than-life, multi-panel train mural that instantly draws in visitors. Specific exhibit areas surrounding the mural tell a variety of special stories, from the timeline which depicts the growth of the rail system to the panels of personal narratives that bring the trains to life.
“By working with the Red River Railroad Museum of Denison to our north and the Interurban Railway Museum of Plano to the south, we literally brought this story home by re-telling it here,” explains museum coordinator Chris Rumohr. “We are showing a modern perspective.”
One exhibit highlights Wood Lake and the role it played in both the lives of the individuals who enjoyed it and in the development of the community. Old photos of depots and trains add to visual images, while other collections feature the M-K-T line and the Katy Railroad.
Exhibits loaned from the Interurban Railway Museum of Plano explain the interurban system and the impact of railroading in Texas, while a case exhibit from the Red River Railroad Museum in Denison highlights Pullman car features.
Robert Haynes, Plano Museum curator, said this exhibit is unique in that The Sherman Museum had numerous unusual artifacts. “By working with area museums, we are able to display some of our old collections in totally new ways,” explained Sherman Museum director Dan Steelman. “The ability to transform our photo collections into large graphics is new for us,” he said. “We hope through this collaborative effort that visitors to our museum will visit the other two in the area and that visitors there will come here.”
“Tracks: The Railroads and Interurbans of North Texas” will be on display at the Sherman Museum, 301 S. Walnut, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays through March 2012. “When we dismantle the exhibit,” Steelman said, “we hope to create a mobile version that could travel to our local schools. Not only are trains interesting and fun, they played a major role in the development of our area.”
Additional Cutline:
Where is this?
This unidentified photo of a North Texas depot is among the archives of The Sherman Museum. If you know where it is, you can contact the Museum by phone at 903-893-7683 or by email on the web site at theshermanmuseum.org and name it! The first person to name the depot will receive a free one-year membership to the Sherman Museum. The photo currently is on display with the “Tracks” exhibit.
