Oakland

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Out in Houston County, there's a place called Oakland. Now, the marker is straight with you about where that name came from: the oak trees.

Oak trees in the vicinity. Simple as that, and honestly, sometimes the truth doesn't need dressing up. What needed a little more work was everything else about building a life out there between the Trinity River and Crockett.

That stretch of land, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was home to a rural settlement. Scattered homes, spread out the way folks sometimes had to spread out when the land was big and the population wasn't. No town square, no platted townsite, no neat little grid of numbered lots.

Just people, living between a river and a road. They did manage to get a few things going. A church went into operation out there, and a cotton gin, and a school.

Not forever, mind you. The marker says for a brief time, and that phrase carries some weight if you let it sit. Among the early settlers were Wilson E.

Hail, who would go on to serve as Houston County Sheriff, and Z.S. Thompson. By the 1930s, Oakland had begun to decline.

The church, the gin, the school, the scattered homes, all of it fading back toward the oaks that gave the place its name. But here's the thing the marker saves for last, almost like an afterthought, except it isn't. Some descendants of those early settlers remain in the area.

The townsite was never platted. But the roots held.

What the marker says

Named for the oak trees in the vicinity, Oakland was a rural settlement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A townsite was never platted, and the community was composed of scattered homes between the Trinity River and Crockett. A church, cotton gin, and school were in operation for a brief time. Among the early settlers of the area were Wilson E. Hail, who later served as Houston County Sheriff, and Z.S. Thompson. The settlement began to decline by the 1930s. Some descendants of early settlers remain in the area. (1988)