Texarkana Is One Town With Two Mayors, and Its Main Street Is the State Line
Texarkana was founded on Dec. 8, 1873, where two railroads met at the Texas-Arkansas line. It grew into two cities that share one main street.
Plenty of Texas towns sit near a state line. Texarkana sits right on one. Its main street, State Line Avenue, was laid out exactly along the border between Texas and Arkansas, and the Handbook of Texas describes the community as two cities. Here is its story, drawn from the Handbook of Texas entry on Texarkana, published by the Texas State Historical Association.
Where two railroads met
The site sat on the Great Southwest Trail, which for hundreds of years was a main travel route past a Caddo village there. The Handbook counts 70 Indian mounds within 30 miles of town.
The modern town was a railroad creation. The Cairo and Fulton Railroad built across Arkansas toward the border, and the Texas and Pacific extended its line to meet it. Texarkana was established on Dec. 8, 1873, at the place where the two lines would join. That same day, George M. Clark opened the first business, a combined drug and grocery store. The line from the south bank of the Red River reached the state line on Jan. 15, 1874.
The name honors three states: Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. No one is certain who coined it. Stories credit a Red River steamboat, a Louisiana storekeeper's "Texarkana Bitters" or a railroad surveyor who put up a sign.
One town, two governments
Texarkana, Texas, received a charter from the Legislature in 1876 and city status in 1907. For years the town had a single post office on the Arkansas side, so Texas-side residents asked for their own. That office operated from 1886 to 1892. Later, Congressman John Morris Sheppard got the name officially changed to Texarkana, Arkansas-Texas.
The Handbook describes Texarkana as commercially one city but made up of two municipalities, with two mayors and two councils. The Handbook says the two share some services, including fire protection, food and dairy inspection, sewage disposal and recreation programs. The Federal Building is unusual because it stands in two states.
A railroad hub that grew
By 1896, Texarkana had waterworks, electric lights, five miles of streetcar lines and a population of 14,000. By 1948 it was one of the Southwest's major railroad centers, where four rail systems met with eight outlets. Red River Army Depot and the Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant helped it recover from the Depression. As of 1992, the Handbook says, the total population was 120,132, of whom 31,656 lived on the Texas side.
Good neighbors
Two governments sharing a town could have meant constant feuding. Instead, Texarkana's neighbors on both sides of the line share fire protection and other services while keeping their own city halls. That is local self-government at its best: accountable to their own residents, and willing to work with the folks across the street.
Hero photo: Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (license).
