Publication: The Texas Magazine, February, 1912
Article Title: Jacksonville, an East Texas City
By: Robert Bolton

Dimensions: 17cm x 25.5cm (6.75in x 10in)
Pages: 96
Published by: The Texas Magazine Publishing Co.,
Houston, Texas

Jacksonville, an East Texas City
Cotton, Fruit and Truck Are Principal Industries
By Robert Bolton

The Young Men's Progressive League has been organized to assist Mother Nature in telling the world of the wonderful opportunities of the Jacksonville country.

Heretofore nature has advertised us by giving the nation the famous Elberta peach and the Acme tomato to tickle the palates of the great American people. Besides the tomato and peach the country around Jacksonville will produce as fine a grape, and earlier than California. We can raise as many strawberries, blackberries and dewberries as we can peaches, as many Irish and sweet potatoes as we can tomatoes. We expect to raise at this point about 7000 bales of cotton, our part of corn, cattle, hogs, horses, mules and chickens. We have the best stock country that is available. In East Texas there are 425,000 acres of land adapted to the industry of tobacco raising. Of this amount, Cherokee county has, by proof, 50,000 acres. This 425,000 acres is the only tobacco land in the United States on which can be produced a duplicate of the famous Cuban cigar leaf tobacco. The annual rainfall averages between forty and forty-five inches; this rainfall is well distributed throughout the year. Our farmers are diversifying and are producing crops that they never thought of handling a few years ago. They are also becoming interested in improved strains of live stock, as the assessor's records will show.

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Nature has supplied Jacksonville with forests of hardwood and pine timber, with many acres of clay suitable for brick and tile, and 58,000 acres of iron ore (which has an average of 6000 tons of ore per acre). We are only 100 miles from coal fields.

Jacksonville has three trunk line railroads, which give us an outlet in six directions, the Texas & New Orleans and Southern Pacific having its division at this point, the International & Great Northern, which reaches the most of the important towns of the State, is an­other, and the St. Louis & Southwestern.

Jacksonville has among the best edu­cational advantages in East Texas. The Alexander Collegiate Institute, the property of the Texas Conference M. E. Church, South, has a twelve-acre campus, a three-story concrete block building, two-story girls' dormitory and a two-story boys' dormitory. The whole plant is valued at $100,000.

The Jacksonville Baptist College has a ten-acre campus, a three-story pressed brick main building, a two-story girls' dormitory, a two-story boys' dormitory. The property of this institution is val­ued at $50,000.

The city is just completing one of the best three-story pressed brick Public School buildings to be found in any town in the State, valued at $40,000.

Jacksonville has two strong banks with a combined resource of $818,000; sixty-eight brick buildings, all occupied; nine wholesale houses; two box, crate and basket factories; two planers, many saw- mills, two gins, one hardwood factory, ice factory and light plant, two marble yards, three ice cream factories, one candy factory, cottonseed oil mill, three job printing concerns, one daily and three weekly newspapers, one of the best telephone systems in the State, with connections to rural and long distance phones; a volunteer fire department, water works, with ample supply of water and mains.

We expect to have in the next few months free mail delivery, pike roads into town, another park, a sewerage system, a wagon factory, a furniture factory.

In the last six months over $200,000 worth of improvements have been made in Jacksonville, and at this time there are a two-story pressed brick building, a compress, a laundry and twelve residences under construction. We have just landed a wholesale saddlery and harness company. We want an up-to-date hotel, more manufacturers, fruit and truck growers and laborers of every sort.
For each of the past five years more than 1000 cars of fruit and vegetables have been shipped from Cherokee County and sold at good prices. Cherokee County ships more peaches and tomatoes than any other section of the United States.

East Texas shipped 1364 cars of tomatoes this year and Cherokee County shipped 965 cars of this amount. In round numbers, the 965 cars brought $840,000.

In 1910, two crops alone, peaches and tomatoes, sold for an amount equal to $20,000 per mile on the Cotton Belt Railroad, which traverses the center of the fruit belt for about fifty miles.