Allen Depot was established in 1876 in the central ward of Allen, Texas. The train depot served as a water stop for the Galveston and Red River Railway chartered by Ebenezer Allen in 1848.[1] By 1856, the Southeast Texas to Red River railroad would transition to the Houston and Texas Central Railway.[2]

Allen Depot
General information
Other names	Allen Heritage Center
Location	100 East Main Street Allen, Texas United States
Coordinates	33°06′09.42″N 96°40′10.59″W
Owned by	Houston and Texas Central Railway
Tracks	1
Construction
Structure type	at-grade
Architectural style	American Foursquare
Other information
Website	Allen Depot - AllenHeritage.org
History
Opened	1 January 1876 (1876-01-01)
Closed	1 January 1959 (1959-01-01)
Location

By 1872, the Allen township began to acknowledge the progression of the track rail with the completion of the railway to Red River City, Texas by 1873.[3]

By the 1950s, the Allen Depot began to observe a significant regression in steam locomotive railway traffic due to the progression of the American automobile industry in the 1950s and the United States interstate highway system.

Allen Water Station

In 1874, the Houston and Texas Central Railway purchased a sector of land from Collin County resident J.W. Franklin to construct a water station to meet the water source demand as required by steam locomotives.[4]

The Allen Water Station was recognized as a Texas historic site receiving a historical marker in 2015.[5]

History of Allen Depot

Sam Bass and Black Hill Bandits in Texas

The Old West outlaw Sam Bass and the Black Hill Bandits organized the first successful train robbery in the State of Texas within the vicinity of the Allen Depot on February 22, 1878.[6][7][8][9]

United States President Theodore Roosevelt Train Caravan of 1905

On April 5, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Allen Train Depot while enroute to San Antonio, Texas for a Rough Riders reunion at the Menger Hotel.[10][11][12]

The 26th President of the United States was cordially received by a vast jubilation who traveled one hundred miles or more by buckboard, buggy, and horseback across North Texas as President Roosevelt delivered speeches concerning his domestic Square Deal program.

In remembrance of President Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 appearances in Denison, Texas and Sherman, Texas, the Texas Historical Commission established a State of Texas historical marker in 1971 in Grayson County, Texas serving as a neighbor to the north of Collin County, Texas.[13][14][15]

Epidemic of 1860s and Texas Railways

In 1860s, the southern Texas counties confronted the predatorial Aedes aegypti or an arthropod ultimately arriving through trade ports along the Texas Gulf Coast.[16][17] The tropical infectious mosquito served as a asymptomatic carrier of an arbovirus progressively inflicting the symptoms of yellow fever on the South Texas civil parishes.[18][19][20][21]

During the Gilded Age, the Texas railways established mounted regiments of health officers drawn on horseback to conduct quarantines of steam locomotives transporting rail travelers.[22] The passenger railroad cars or Pullman coaches could potentially be harmful and transmissible with the mosquito-borne disease scientifically known as flavivirus.[23]

Orphan Train Movement of 1854-1929

By the early 1850s, the U.S. states began to acknowledge over-crowding in the Eastern Seaboard cities. The Eastern United States instituted the guardianship of an Orphan Train movement for early childhood, preadolescence, and adolescence dependents determined as abandoned, homeless, and orphaned in an American census-designated place. The American youth were missioned by the ideology of manifest destiny to an agrarian society in the American frontier.

The social welfare initiative sustained seventy-five years enduring from 1854 to 1929 in the United States. On May 31, 1929, an orphan train departed New York City for a final steam locomotive journey with a terminative destination at Sulphur Springs, Texas.[24]

Bibliography Pictorial

See also

Allen Station, Texas Electric Railway

Gulf Coast Lines

List of Texas railroads

Texas and Pacific Railway

Texas Electric Railway

References

Historical Video Archive

External links

• Media related to Allen Depot (Allen, Texas) at Wikimedia Commons