Early Texarkana
/People from all walks of life built the city in which we now reside
By Jamie Simmons
Images provided by the TMS Wilbur Smith Research Archive
O. C. Herrenkind and J. P. Freeman were among the first business owners in Texarkana. This photograph of their stores—a general store and a liquor wholesalers dealership, respectively—was taken in the spring of 1874.
Texarkana was a town in development for many years before being formally established by a sale of city lots on December 8, 1873, the culmination of close to three decades of effort. At that time, the Cairo and Fulton Railroad hadn’t quite completed its lines into the townsite. In fact, very little in the way of actual preparations had been made beyond platting the original city. The railroad had, however, begun advertising the sale in newspapers across the country. This included Jefferson, Texas, a bustling port city that had turned away the railroad, believing that riverboats were still the way to go.
Jefferson, as it turns out, was an incubator for the entrepreneurs and industrialists who would make up Texarkana’s early population. Among those who traveled from Jefferson to attend the sale was a businessman named Anthony L. Ghio. This 30-something father of four had immigrated from Italy as a teenager. He was a man of drive and vision who became the third person to purchase lots and, within hours of the sale, became the first person to begin building in the new city.
Town lore states that Colonel Montrose, representing the railroad, used a large stump as an auction block. That stump was said to have been located on the state line, approximately where Union Station (constructed in 1929) is now standing. The first streets laid out were Front, Broad, and Clinton (now Third) Streets, all of which were laid parallel to the planned location of the railroad tracks. As expected, the cross streets were laid out perpendicular to these first three streets. It was all to be very normal and regulated, with square blocks and rectangular lots aligning to a grid.
Then came Robert W. Rodgers.
Also a man of vision, Robert Rodgers capitalized on the potential of owning lots on both the Arkansas and Texas side of the city. He began buying up lots along the state line, from Front Street to what is now Fourth Street. He eventually graded a few yards on either side of the line to create Texarkana’s most iconic street: State Line Avenue. Since this street follows the state line, and due to the fact that the rest of the city was laid out on a grid, many oddly-shaped lots were suddenly littering downtown.
One such lot is home to what is arguably the most historic building in Texarkana. The Offenhauser Building at 219 North State Line Avenue has held court over downtown Texarkana since 1879. The oldest portion, the center section of the first two floors, was built by W. H. Hakes, a Union veteran of the Civil War who traveled west like so many others to rebuild his life. He established the Bank of Texarkana on the first floor. The upper floor, which originally had a separate entrance accessible only by an exterior set of stairs, was rented out.
W.H. Hakes, a Union veteran of the Civil War, is shown in the doorway of his newly built Bank of Texarkana (a.k.a. Hakes’ Bank) in 1879. This was one of the first brick buildings constructed in Texarkana.
In 1882, one of Texarkana’s oldest continuously operating businesses, Offenhauser Insurance Company, was established above Hakes’ bank. Fred W. Offenhauser purchased the entire building in 1894, and the company remained at that location until 1971, when it moved to a newer building on Pine Street.
Several of the city’s “founding fathers” have been mentioned already, but what about the women? Good question. History is often told from the point of view of, as someone once put it, “old, dead white guys.” That’s often because they were the ones recording the stories, printing the news, controlling how history was remembered.
Were there women at the first sale of lots? Many families attended the sale, so there were surely women. Who and how many, the formal histories don’t say. One of the earliest businesswomen was Lizzie O’Donnell, a seamstress and milliner who owned a shop on Broad Street in the 1880s. She was successful enough to have once owned the fabulous 1895 mansion on Pecan Street, now known as the Wadley House.
There were many women of all walks of life in Texarkana in its early decades. Wealthy women, poor women, business owners, homemakers, women of different nationalities and ethnicities. Women were often the ones establishing churches, schools, and generally turning a wild new town into a thriving modern city.
There were also madams who owned large, successful brothels. At one time, Front and Broad Streets were full of saloons and brothels right alongside mercantiles (or general stores), professional offices, and even churches. Lottie Belmont and Zoe LeRoy operated two of the most well-known “houses of assignation,” Belmont House and the Silver Dollar, respectively.
Texarkana’s early history is full of personal stories of people looking to start their lives or start over. Immigrants from all over the world followed the call of opportunity and made Texarkana their home. Among them were the Kosminsky and Marks families, the first two Jewish families to settle in Texarkana. In 1875, the Kosminsky family owned a store on the rapidly growing Broad Street. The first services for what would become Mount Sinai Synagogue were held at Kosminsky Hall.
By the 1880s, Texarkana was a miniature melting pot of different cultures. This atmosphere produced one of Texarkana’s most well-known citizens and one of America’s most important composers, Scott Joplin. Born in approximately 1868 in northeast Texas, Scott grew up in Texarkana. His story reflected that of many young Black people of the time. His father, a formerly enslaved man, moved the family to Texarkana in search of work. The Joplins were self-taught musicians, but Scott showed particular promise at an extremely young age. He learned folk songs from his parents alongside receiving a formal education in classical music. He was exposed to a variety of musical traditions brought to Texarkana by the many immigrants who made the city their home. All of these influences can be heard in Scott Joplin’s later compositions. His masterwork, the Ragtime opera Treemonisha, is set in this area, demonstrating the lasting impression Texarkana left on the brilliant composer.
Aerial view of State Line Avenue, circa 1905. Most of the buildings shown in this photograph are still standing in one form or another. The exception is the Gothic Revival post office, which was torn down in the 1930s to make way for the iconic Beaux Arts building we know today.
Scott Joplin may be the most well known, but there have been many other important musicians, composers, and performers from Texarkana. Among them were Lois Towles, Yetta Wexler, and Conlon Nancarrow, all of whom left indelible marks on the international music scene. Coincidentally, all of them were born in 1912.
There are, of course, tens of thousands of stories about Texarkana that can be told. One hundred fifty years of ordinary and extraordinary events make up the Texarkana of today. Each story deserves to be told and remembered. What is your Texarkana story?
TEXARKANA IN 2023
