East Texas History
A project by Sam Houston State UniversityEast Texas History is a free mobile app and web platform that places the past at your fingertips. Designed by the History Department at Sam Houston State University, the project seeks to highlight the distinctive people, places, and events that have shaped East Texas. Viewers may learn about the region through our interactive, map-based interface that includes historical stories, photographs, and oral interviews. Follow our progress on Twitter or connect with us on Facebook to learn more about the project or to become a participating author.
Read more About UsFeatured Stories
Huntsville Prison Recordings
Folklorist John Avery Lomax toured prisons in the South to record the voices and music of those who were incarcerated there, particularly African American inmates or as his records indicate, "Negro convicts." Lomax and his son Alan, a…
Smithers Plantation Recordings
To collect authentic, undocumented folk music, John A. Lomax and his son Alan specifically sought out "made up" songs, ones that had been created and developed by everyday people. In 1934, while searching for the local and secular music of…
Sugar Land Recordings
Searching for authentic folk music, John A. Lomax made multiple trips to the Sugar Land area in the 1930s. First in 1933 and 1934, he and his son Alan visited the Central State correctional facility to document work songs of African American…
Featured Tours
The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1867
12 Locations ~ Curated by Zachary Doleshal, Ph.D., SHSU Public History Students of 2017Random Stories
Boettcher's Mill
German immigrant Baldwin Boettcher established a sawmill at Westfield, north of Houston, in 1898, along the International and Great Northern rail line. Boettcher and his mill workers produced 15,000 board feet of yellow pine, gum and cypress lumber…
Houston Chronicle Building
The Houston Chronicle was founded in 1901 by former Houston Post reporter and editor Marcellus E. Foster (1870-1942), an 1890 graduate of Sam Houston Normal Institute. The Chronicle was bankrolled in part by the return on Foster's investment in the…
Texas Prison Rodeo Arena (1951-2012)
A casual observer today might never know that a now-empty field near the Huntsville ("Walls") Unit once hosted "The Wildest Show Behind Bars"--the Texas Prison Rodeo. The rodeo was launched in 1931 during the Great Depression, and…
Bath Cemetery
Bath Cemetery, near Union Hill Church, was established in the 1870s. The earliest recorded burila is that of William Arnold in 1877. The burial ground has served the Bath Community, locally called Possum Walk, since that time, and area residents and…
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church
St. Stephen's Church, located at 5019 Sam Houston Avenue, is the sixth oldest church in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. In 1854, the Rev. Charles Gillette reported that St. Stephen's had ten communicants. The church's early…
Rusk Post Office and Its New Deal Mural
The United States Post Office in Rusk, Texas, features a Bernard Baruch Zakheim mural titled "Agriculture and Industry at Rusk." Completed in 1939, Zakheim's powerful mural illustrates Rusk's rough agrarian and industrial history…