The History of Ore City, Texas

Ore City takes its name from the area's most valuable natural resource: iron ore. Rich deposits in the East Texas Iron Ore Belt were discovered here in the antebellum period, and ore was mined sporadically from the 1860s through about 1900. The reddish ore in the hills around the future townsite gave the place both its identity and its name.

For decades the mining was small-scale and intermittent, but the promise of the ore lingered. It would take an ambitious outsider with a railroad scheme to try to turn that promise into a town.

Around 1910 a commercial company formed to mine the ore in earnest, led by Colonel L.P. Featherstone, a former U.S. congressman from Arkansas. His vision was bold: persuade the Santa Fe Railway to finance a rail line carrying Ore City iron all the way to Port Bolivar on the Gulf Coast. Land for a new city was bought and platted into streets and lots around 1911.

The plan made real progress. By 1914 some thirty miles of the Port Bolivar Iron Ore Railway had been built, connecting Ore City toward Longview, and the new community had an estimated 400 residents. For a moment, Ore City looked like it might become a genuine mining and shipping center.

Then came World War I. The war halted further construction on the railroad, Featherstone's company slid into bankruptcy, and the grand plan to reach the Gulf collapsed. The rail line was abandoned in 1927, and Ore City's days as an industrial boomtown were over before they truly began.

But the town survived. By 1936 about 500 people still called Ore City home, and the community settled into life as a small farming, timber, and trading town. The later creation of Lake O' the Pines just to the north gave Ore City a new role as a gateway to lake recreation. Today it's a quiet town of around 1,100, its name a permanent reminder of the iron ore and the railroad dream that founded it.