A New County is Born: 1872 to 1874

If the Southern Pacific had been able to continue construction, Longview might have remained a minor railroad stop in Upshur County.

Furthermore, the track might have run along the Marshall-Tyler Road all the way to Tyler as planned. That road crossed the Sabine River at Camp's ferry south of the future Gladewater. Instead, during all of 1871 and 1872, the track ended at a locomotive turntable between Center and High Streets. Longview received nationwide attention as the temporary head of the southern rail line across the country. Business, population, and construction were stimulated by wagon traffic from an enormous area for which Longview provided the closest rail access.

Among other Longview enterprises, future Texas governor James Stephen Hogg of Rusk got his start at age 20 as publisher of an abortive newspaper called the Longview News. Eight by 12 inches in size, it came out three times a week during the last two months of 1871, vilifying Republican rule-especially Senator Flanagan-and railroad corruption. The Longview News-Journal is the successor of another, much later newspaper called the Longview Daily News.

During 1872, Longview's rising fortunes were further boosted by the International Railroad Company (later named International & Great Northern), which planned to build a line from Laredo to St. Louis. The route crossed the Southern Pacific track about 600 feet east of the one-mile-square city limit of Longview and crossed the Red River northeast of Texarkana at Fulton. Hoping to participate in profits from further development of Longview, the International acquired a tract of 244 1/2 acres lying east of the SP's 150 acres. Separated from that site by one row of lots which had already been sold, the International tract extended east to what became Teague Street. It was bought in March of 1872 from John R. Magrill, an Earpville farmer like O. H. Methvin. Rather than reaching Fulton, however, the International laid track only a few hundred feet beyond the SP, putting its depot near the end. A curved junction was laid northwest of the crossing to allow traffic from one line to the other. When building through the pioneer community of New Danville in 1872, the International created Kilgore.

Meanwhile, the Southern Pacific was acquired by the new, federally mandated Texas & Pacific. At the end of 1872, International traffic with Palestine commenced, and the T&P began rapidly laying track westward. The new town of Gladewater was created next to the pioneer community of Point Pleasant. Other counties outbid Smith County on railroad subsidies, so the T&P line passed far north of Tyler. It left the Marshall-Tyler Road at Gladewater and headed for Dallas from there.

By then, thriving Longview had acquired enough political influence to have a county of its own. Late in 1872, a Democratic majority was returned by the first legislative election since the military government was withdrawn in 1870. When the legislature convened in January, 1873, Democratic Upshur County Representative B.W. Brown (lay minister of Summerfield Methodist Church) introduced a bill to make Longview the seat of a new county called Roanoke, composed of pieces taken from Upshur, Rusk, and Harrison Counties. Later, the proposed name was changed to honor a prominent Texas secessionist leader named John Gregg who was killed in action as a Confederate general.

However, Rusk and Harrison counties successfully resisted fragmentation in 1873. Thus when Gregg County was created in that year, it consisted only of about 143 square miles taken from Upshur County, with the Sabine River as its southern boundary. Furthermore, rather than designating Longview as the county seat, the legislature allowed the voters to decide that issue in the first county election, held in June, 1873. Longview won over Awalt (named for Solomon Awalt, founding pastor of Pine Tree Cumberland Presbyterian Church), which was a portion of the Pine Tree community lying along the Marshall-Tyler Road. The T&P immediately platted a new town at Awalt, known as Willow Springs, which remained undeveloped until it became Greggton about 1929.

In April of the next year, 1874, a little over half of the desired Rusk County portion was added to Gregg County-about 141 square miles lying south of the Sabine River. The county seat was left embarrassingly close to one edge of a three-piece jigsaw puzzle with one big piece missing. The piece that remained forever lost was about 145 square miles of Harrison County, including Hallsville, bounded by Little Cypress Bayou and a line running north from near the later town of Easton.

When platting the town almost four years earlier, the Southern Pacific had neglected the possibility of a new county. Belatedly, the T&P donated an entire city block as the courthouse square, except for one lot on the southwest corner that had already been sold. Until early in the next century, there were two houses on that lot, across Center Street from First Presbyterian Church.