The History of Rusk, Texas

Cherokee County was marked off from Nacogdoches County in April 1846 and organized that July, with Rusk designated as its county seat. The town was named for Thomas Jefferson Rusk — a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, a leader of the Republic of Texas, and later a U.S. senator — one of the towering figures of early Texas.

Rusk grew slowly at first; by 1850 it had about 355 residents. As the seat of Cherokee County, it became the governmental and commercial center of a hilly, heavily forested region of the East Texas Piney Woods, anchored by the Cherokee County Courthouse on its historic downtown square.

In the 1870s and 1880s, the state of Texas built a penitentiary at Rusk. To move materials and goods to and from the prison, inmates built a railroad beginning in 1881 — the line that would, nearly a century later, become one of East Texas's most popular attractions.

The penitentiary era left a lasting mark. The state institutions established here — later including the Rusk State Hospital — became major employers, and the railroad the prisoners built was reborn in 1976 as a tourist line. Today the Texas State Railroad carries visitors on scenic steam-train excursions between Rusk and Palestine, a living link to the town's 19th-century past.

Rusk's most remarkable claim is political: this small town has been home to three governors. James Stephen 'Jim' Hogg, born at the Mountain Home plantation near Rusk, served as Texas's 20th governor from 1891 to 1895 and was the first native-born Texan to hold the office. Thomas M. Campbell, another Texas governor, also called Rusk home, as did John B. Kendrick, who became a U.S. senator and the governor of Wyoming.

Hogg's birthplace is preserved today as part of a 178-acre park in the piney woods. Add the historic Rusk footbridge — at 546 feet, the second-longest footbridge in America — and this county seat of about 5,300 people carries a history far larger than its size.