Timpson

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight with a little extra on the side. Now, you have to understand something about the year 1884. Houston businessman Paul Bremond, born in 1810, was a man with a map in his head and investors at his back, and together they started planning a railroad that would stretch all the way from Houston to Shreveport, Louisiana.

Surveys went out along the proposed route, and the land started whispering back its secrets. Then came 1885, and with it, a town. They named it Timpson, after Paul C.

Timpson, the railroad official who actually laid the thing out. So when you say the town and the railroad were connected from the very beginning, well, you're not wrong. The railroad in question was the Houston, East and West Texas Railroad, a narrow gauge system, and on August 1, 1885, the first passenger train rolled into that brand new town.

Now think about what that moment looked like. A locomotive pulling up to a place that barely had a name yet. But it had ambition, and ambition in East Texas has always been a fast-moving thing.

The first businesses were two stores, and here's the detail I love most, they were separated by a pine thicket. Just standing there between them like the land hadn't quite gotten the memo yet. That thicket would later be cleared and turned into the town square.

Within a year, the population had climbed to one thousand people. One year. In that same first year, a school was begun, churches were organized, fraternal organizations took root.

Then came the newspaper, the grocery stores, the drug stores, other retail shops, an ice company, factories, banks. Timpson wasn't growing, it was erupting. It became an important East Texas center for lumber, cotton, and rail.

Those railroads kept their grip on the town all the way into the 1940s, when state roads and highways started pulling freight away from the tracks. The trains that built the town eventually found themselves sharing the road with something faster. Paul Bremond didn't live to see all of it.

He was born in 1810 and died in 1885, the same year the first train arrived. But that first whistle blowing into a pine-thicket town on August 1st, 1885, that was enough of a legacy for any man to leave behind.

What the marker says

In 1884, Houston businessman Paul Bremond (1810-1885), and other investors began planning for a new railroad to connect Houston and Shreveport, Louisiana. Surveys soon began along the proposed route, and in 1885 the town of Timpson was founded, named for Paul C. Timpson, the railroad official who laid out the town. The Houston, East and West Texas Railroad, a narrow gauge system, was soon a reality, and the first passenger train arrived in the new town on August 1, 1885. The first businesses in the new town were two stores, separated by a pine thicket which would later be cleared for use as the town square. Within a year, the population had grown to 1,000. Within the first year of Timpson's founding, a school was begun, and churches and fraternal organizations were organized. Many businesses were established, including a newspaper; grocery, drug, and other retail stores; an ice company; factories; and banks. The town became an important East Texas lumber, cotton, and rail center, as well. Railroads continued their important role in Timpson until the 1940s, when development of state roads and highways decreased the use of rail shipments. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986