Woodsboro Square

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Woodsboro Square. Now settle in, because this is one of those stories where a piece of flat South Texas ground turns into something that holds a whole town together. It starts, like a lot of good Texas stories do, with a couple of men from somewhere else with land on their minds.

W. C. Johnson and George P.

Pugh came out of Danville, Illinois, and what they had was a vision, a railway, and a ranch deal. The railway was the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico line, and along it, in late 1906, Johnson and Pugh laid out a brand new town.

They'd bought the Bonnie View Ranch from a man named Captain Tobias D. Wood, and when it came time to name the place, well, that name didn't wander far. The town became Woodsboro.

The very hotel that anchored early life here, the Bonnie View Land Company Hotel, got a post office inside its walls in 1907. So you had travelers, settlers, speculators, and now mail. Things were moving.

Then comes 1908, and here's where the square enters the picture. When the official town plat was drawn up, somebody had the good sense to set aside a public square, right in the middle of it all. And that square didn't sit idle.

It became the center of the economic growth and civic enterprises that marked Woodsboro's early years. By 1914, the Woodsboro Commercial Club had been founded, and that organization left its mark in a way you can still appreciate, a waterworks, installed right there in the town square. Clean water, community investment, civic pride, all of it anchored to that one piece of ground.

The town was incorporated in 1929, and through all the decades since, the plaza has held its place as a center for civic activities. Some things in Texas get built up and then forgotten. This square never did.

It's still there, still the heart of Woodsboro, just like the plat intended.

What the marker says

A land development project of W. C. Johnson and George P. Pugh of Danville, Illinois, this town along the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway was laid out in late 1906. A post office was established in the Bonnie View Land Company Hotel in 1907, and the town was named for Captain Tobias D. Wood, who had sole his Bonnie View Ranch to Johnson and Pugh. A public square was included in the official town plat in 1908 and it became the center of the economic growth and civic enterprises that characterized the early development of Woodsboro. The Woodsboro Commercial Club was founded in 1914. Among its more lasting contributions was a waterworks installed in the town square. The town was incorporated in 1929. The plaza remains a center for civic activities in Woodsboro. (1999)