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BULLARD,
TEXAS AKA
Etna and Hewsville
Smith County, East
Texas
US 69 and FMs 2493, 2137, and 344
12 miles S of Tyler
15 miles N of Jacksonville
Population: 1,150 (2000) Book
Your Hotel Here & Save
Tyler Hotels |
Downtown
Bullard
Photo courtesy Lori
Martin, December 2005 |
History in a Pecan
Shell
The
Etna post office, just west of Bullard was granted in 1867, even though
settlers had been in the vicinity since the early 1850s. John and Emma Bullard
arrived about 1870 and a new post office named Hewsville opened in Bullard's store
in 1881. This caused the closing of the Etna post office in 1883 and a renaming
of the Hewsville post office to Bullard.
When the Kansas and
Gulf Short Line Railroad extended their route from Tyler
to Lufkin they passed through Bullard
and built a depot. In 1890 there were 200 residents and the town had most essential
business plus a doctor and a telegraph office.
The railroad was renamed
several times - becoming the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas Railway and then (1892)
the Tyler and Southwestern Railway. In 1903 the two schools (segregated) had five
teachers and 186 students between them.
By 1914 the population had doubled
to 400 and the railroad changed names once again - becoming the St. Louis Southwestern
Railroad. |
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Another
view of downtown Bullard
Photo courtesy Lori
Martin, December 2005 |
The
1920s saw the opening of a theater and the forming of a community band. The town
also gained some notoriety for its unique holding tank - a 7 foot diameter wooden
tub with bars mounted on a wagon frame. When full, the contraption was driven
to Tyler for emptying.
The population was still just 450 after WWII
and the community didn't get a city council until and until 1948.
By
the mid 1960s the population had declined to only 300 but rebounded by 1973 when
it was back up to 573. The community is now concentrated around the crossroads
and most resident commute to nearby Tyler.
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| | Old
barn near downtown Bullard
Photo courtesy Lori
Martin, March 2001 | |
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| "Old
Barn in Bullard Texas. This barn was across the Street from the Douglas Cemetery.
It was on the Property of the Old Douglas Plantation. I Don't know when the barn
was built but I took the picture in 2001 and I drove by the other day and the
barn was now a pile of rubble." - Lori
Martin, December 2005 |
Area Destinations:
TYLER
- A drive with beauty and history
Excerpted
from "The East Texas Sunday Drive Book" by Bob Bowman
Burning
Bush – An East Texas Ghost Town
An
excerpt from The 25 Best Ghost Towns of East Texas by Bob Bowman
They say in Bullard if you stand beneath the pecan trees south of Bullard and
turn your head slightly to the north wind, you can almost hear the hallelujahs
of an old-fashioned church revival.
It was here, on a rich piece of black
East Texas ground straddling the Cherokee and Smith County border, that men and
women of another era fashioned a community unlike anything we’ve seen since the
early 1900s.
Burning Bush is gone today, remembered only by a grove of
nut and fruit trees and a few old wells, but in 1913... more |
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