Hallsville

Hallsville is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 80 and Farm Road 450, on the Union Pacific Railroad twelve miles west of Marshall in southwestern Harrison County. The area was first settled in 1839, when Fort Crawford was built one mile west of the site of present Hallsville by W. C. Crawford as a protection against Indians. In 1849 the fort is reported to have had a post office and a two-story building that served as church, Masonic hall, and school (the only school in western Harrison County until 1868). In 1869, when an independent Southern Pacific Railway crossed a mile north of Fort Crawford, the settlers moved to the railroad and named the new settlement for a railroad official. All that remains at the original location is a cemetery. A post office named Hallville opened in 1869, and the first business in the new community was a saloon. From 1869 to 1872 the town was the terminus of the railroad, and the railroad company built a general office and machine shops there. The community incorporated for the first time in 1870 and was a boom town, with as many as fifty businesses, in the early 1870s. Hallville shipped cotton, wool, and hides. In 1872, when the Texas and Pacific acquired the railroad and built out to Longview in Gregg County, Hallville lost much of its western trade. In 1873 the railroad moved its local headquarters and shops to Marshall. Hallville's incorporation lapsed, and the community lost many of its people to Marshall in the later 1870s. In 1884 it had an estimated 600 inhabitants, three churches, six sawmills, six grist mill-gins, a hotel, two saloons, and a cooperative association. By 1892 the population had fallen to 300, but it recovered to 600 in the 1900s. In 1904 the Hallville school district had two schools serving 180 white pupils and one school serving 111 black pupils. A bank opened in the community in 1909. In the 1920s the post office changed the spelling of its name to Hallsville. The community reincorporated in 1935. The population fell from 695 in 1920 to 480 in 1930, rose to an estimated 1,000 in the 1940s, and fell again to 600 in the 1950s. After the mid-1960s Hallsville grew steadily in population, reaching a high of 2,096 in 1988. The number of businesses grew from twenty in 1966 to thirty-one in 1988. In 1990 the population was 2,288, and in 2000 it was 2,772.