Coldspring

Coldspring is at the junction of State Highway 150 and Farm roads 1514, 946, and 2025, sixty-five miles north of Houston in central San Jacinto County. According to local tradition, the settlement was named by Joseph Graves for the cold springwater found there. The first post office, named Coonskin, was opened in 1847. Within a year the office was renamed Fireman's Hill, and in 1850 the name was changed to Cold Spring, officially respelled Coldspring in 1894. The town, located on the Robert Rankin grant, became the county seat of newly established San Jacinto County in 1870. County government, agriculture, and lumbering provided the chief sources of income for Coldspring residents during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The courthouse burned in 1915, and the townsite was moved to its present, more elevated, site. The old town is now marked only by the old San Jacinto County Jail, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and became a registered Texas landmark in 1982. The first bank in Coldspring opened in 1907, at which time the community had between 400 and 500 residents.