Townsite of Coldspring

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight with a little color on the side. This is the townsite of Coldspring, San Jacinto County, Texas. Before a single building went up, before a single name was nailed to anything, this land sat in a Mexican grant made to Colonel Robert Rankin, a veteran of the American Revolution.

That's the ground we're talkin about. Old soldier's land. You can feel the history stackin up already.

Now, a post office showed up here in 1847, and somebody, with a completely straight face apparently, decided to call it Coonskin. Just Coonskin. It didn't stay that way.

The name shifted to Fireman's Hill, which raises its own questions, and then by 1850 they landed on Cold Springs, which at least sounds like a place you'd want to be on a July afternoon in East Texas. The spelling eventually settled down to one word, Coldspring, and that's where it stands today. The original town plat laid out fourteen blocks, which is a modest start but a start nonetheless.

A wooden courthouse went up, served the county, and then in 1915 it burned. Just burned. A stone building rose in its place in 1918, because apparently San Jacinto County had learned something.

Then, by 1923, most of the town had picked itself up and moved up the hill to where Coldspring sits right now. The whole town. Moved up a hill.

If that doesn't tell you something about Texans, I don't know what does. And through all of this, people were tryin to get educated. An academy opened here in 1847, the same year the post office was callin itself Coonskin.

By 1880 there was the Male and Female Institute, which is a very serious name for a school, and sometime in that same decade Mrs. India Grace was running her own private school. Three different visions of what learning ought to look like, all takin root in the same little stretch of East Texas ground.

Coonskin to Coldspring, a wooden courthouse to a stone one, fourteen blocks on a plat to a whole town movin uphill. That's not just a town bein named. That's a town decidin, over and over again, what it wants to be.

What the marker says

Before founding of town, this land lay in Mexican grant made to Col. Robt. Rankin, veteran of American Revolution. Post office here bore name "Coonskin" (1847), then "Fireman's Hill," and finally "Cold Springs" (1850). Spelling later became "Coldspring." Original town plat contained 14 blocks. First courthouse, of wood, burned 1915. Present stone building replaced it in 1918. By 1923 most of town had moved up the hill to present site. Early schools included an 1847 academy, the 1880 "Male and Female Institute," and Mrs. India Grace's private school of 1880s.