Red Lick

Red Lick is a small town located off Farm Road 2148 about seven miles west of Texarkana in northeastern Bowie County. The community began in the 1860s and was named by residents who observed that a nearby red clay hill served as a salt lick for area deer. By the late 1800s social life centered around the Red Lick Methodist Episcopal Church, South, founded in 1885. The Bob Bonner family donated land for the wooden structure that also functioned as a lodge hall and school. Eventually a cemetery was located on an adjacent tract to the north. Church records in the early 1890s listed seventy names, and in 1906 church trustees included members of the Hargis, Earnest, Edwards, Medley, and White families. In 1909 a fire destroyed the church, but the congregation constructed another two-story building on that site. That structure suffered heavy damage in June 1935 when a tornado hit the community. Red Lick maintained its country school throughout the decades just prior to and after World War II