East Texas, one of the first areas to be settled in Texas by Anglo families, has so many forgotten towns that a listing of them all would be almost impossible.
But a Lufkin couple, Bob and Doris Bowman, has undertaken an effort to tell the stories of hundreds of the towns in a series of books.
The first volume in the series, "The Forgotten Towns of East Texas," has been released by Best of East Texas Publishers of Lufkin, and will be followed by at least three more volumes in coming years.
The Bowmans, already the authors of 36 books about East Texas, embarked on the towns project three years ago.
"The Forgotten Towns of East Texas," Volume I, includes stories and photos dealing with 66 towns in 45 East Texas counties, including Homer, a former county seat, and Manton, a one-time fruit farm community, both in Angelina County.
The book deals with some of the region's earliest towns, including Caddo Mounds, a prehistoric Indian village in Cherokee County: Mission Tejas, the first Spanish settlement in East Texas; and Champ de Aisle, a French community in Liberty County.
The Bowmans categorized other towns as farmer towns, religious communities, resort towns, oddly-named towns, ethnic communities, former county seats, teaching towns, river ports, sawmill and logging communities, ferry crossings, tough towns, hard-luck settlements, forts and military posts, railroad stops, and iron and oil towns.
"Today, there are forgotten towns in every county of East Texas. Some lie asleep beside well-traveled highways with granite or aluminum markers to mark their passing. Others are buried in second and third-growth forests, visited and remembered only by a few sentimentalists. Some have been forgotten entirely," said Bob Bowman.
A forgotten town, said Bowman, is not necessarily a town that has totally vanished. "Some towns we explored still have buildings, even small clusters of people, but are only shells of their former selves. Some towns may be what we call recovering ghosts now existing in areas of recent growth," he said.
"What attracted us to all of the towns was the diversity of history they brought to East Texas during their lifetimes," he added
"The Forgotten Towns of East Texas, Volume I," is available from Best of East Texas Publishers, PO Box 1647, Lufkin, Texas, 75902, Telephone 936-634-7444, or via e-mail at bobb@consolidated.net.
RSS Feed
