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BIG
SANDY, TEXAS Upshur
County, East Texas
Highways 155 and 80, and FM 2911
14 Miles SW of Gilmer
30
Miles W of Longview
21
Miles NE of Tyler
Population:
1,288 (2000)
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History in a Pecan
Shell
Originally called Big Sandy Switch when the Texas and
Pacific Railroad connected with the Tyler Tap Line Railroad (narrow gauge) around
1880, the name comes from Big Sandy creek. Settlement had begun a few years earlier
and a post office had opened its doors in the mid 1870s.
The community
dropped the word switch in the mid 1880s and as Big Sandy, Texas, it reported
a population estimated at 500. Big Sandy became a regional cotton
market in the mid 1910s and the population had reached 850 by the end of the 1920s.
It took a hit with the arrival of the Great Depression, falling under 600 residents
by 1933.
The town has been spared natural and man-made disasters and its
history is largely uneventful – a claim other towns wish they could make. A post
war boom increased the population to over 1,000 citizens and it has remained above
that level since 1958, reaching 1,185 for the 2000 Census.
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