Texas & Pacific Railway

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The Texas and Pacific Railway. Nolan County.

Now, construction on this line began back in East Texas, early eighteen seventies, and the railroad had its eye on the west. By eighteen eighty, the line was pushing out across the wide open, and by eighteen eighty-one it had arrived. Sweetwater.

March twelfth of that year, the first train rolled in, and nothing was ever quite the same. See, when a railroad finds a town, or maybe when a town finds a railroad, things start movin fast. Business went up along the rail line.

Homes went up along the rail line. Sweetwater became, in the truest sense, a railroad town. Settlers came in.

Building materials came in. And local products, livestock, all of it finally had a way out, a shipping route to somewhere beyond the horizon. The railroad wasn't just iron and steam.

It was the spine the town grew around. For decades that station stood right here on this site, passengers coming and going, freight moving, the whole rhythm of the place tied to the sound of that whistle. Then, in nineteen sixty-nine, passenger service was discontinued.

And after that, the station was razed. Gone. Just the ground it stood on, and a marker to tell you what once was here.

That's the thing about railroads. They build towns up, and then time, well, time does what it does. But Sweetwater's still here, and that first train still arrived on March twelfth, eighteen eighty-one, and nobody can raze that.

What the marker says

Construction of the Texas and Pacific Railway began in East Texas in the early 1870's. By 1880 the line was expanding westward. It reached Sweetwater in 1881, with the first train arriving on March 12 of that year. Sweetwater became a railroad town, with business and homes built along the rail line. The railroad was a major influence on the town's development, bringing in settlers and building materials and providing shipping access for local products and livestock. The railroad station at this site was razed after passenger service was discontinued in 1969. (1989)