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Downtown
Arp
Photo courtesy Barclay Gibson, January 2006 |
History in
a Pecan Shell
The area was settled in the late 1860s, although things didn't really
get going until the International-Great Northern Railroad came through
in 1872 and made this stop on their line "Jarvis Switch." Growth was
non-existant to slow until 1897 when truck farmer J. W. Melton relocated
from Troup, Texas and started shipping tomatoes. A post office was
granted in 1898 as "Strawberry, Texas" but this name only lasted a
year. It was renamed for a newspaper editor named William Arp. By
1902 Arp had three churches, no fewer than five general stores, a
drugstore and physician. Arp grew as a vegetable and fruit shipping
point for area farmers and became the postal connection for Omen,
Texas when their post office closed in 1906.
By 1914 the town had a population of nearly 400. Omen, Texas continued
to decline and even their Masonic lodge moved to Arp. In 1931 oil
was discovered and Arp became the headquarters for The McMurry Refining
Company. The population reached it's high-water mark in the mid 1930s
with 2,500 citizens but as the Great Depression wound down, so did
the population - reaching about 1,000 by the end of the decade. It
was still at that level in the 1960s, even though the number of businesses
had declined by half. In 1989 there were just over 1,000 residents
which declined to 812 by 1990. |
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