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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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