The History of Tenaha, Texas

Tenaha was founded in 1885 as a shipping point on the Houston, East and West Texas Railway, the line that ran up through the Piney Woods and later passed to the Southern Pacific. Like many East Texas towns, it owed its existence to the rails: when the tracks came through, a town grew up around the depot to gather and ship the cotton, timber, and produce of the surrounding farm country.

The community was named by members of the Hicks family for Tenehaw Municipality — the original name of Shelby County under the Republic of Texas, before the county was reorganized and renamed. A post office opened in 1886 with James N. Woodfin as the first postmaster, and the young town quickly took root along the railroad.

Tenaha grew fast for a frontier railroad town. By 1890 it had about 200 residents, several stores, three churches, and a school, and by 1896 the population had jumped to an estimated 680, with a range of businesses and even a weekly newspaper, the Ledger. It had become a busy shipping center for the area's farmers and lumbermen, and the town incorporated in the early 1900s.

Through the first half of the twentieth century, Tenaha's economy ran on timber and farming. By 1946 the town supported several lumber-manufacturing industries and a large tomato-canning plant — tomatoes being a major East Texas cash crop in that era. Cotton, lumber, and produce moving out by rail kept the town busy for decades.

Tenaha's most enduring legacy may be a chant: 'Tenaha, Timpson, Bobo, and Blair.' By tradition it was the singsong call of a train conductor naming four stations in a row — Tenaha and Timpson, which survive today, and Bobo and Blair, two flag stops that have all but vanished. The phrase later became a good-luck cry in dice games, where players shouted it rolling for ten, and Texas soldiers carried it far and wide. Cowboy singer Tex Ritter, who grew up nearby, turned it into a song in the 1940s and gave the four little towns a measure of immortality.

The second half of the century was quieter. Many of the old lumber mills and the cannery had closed by the 1980s, and the population settled to around a thousand. The town found a new outside draw in its proximity to Toledo Bend Reservoir to the east, a great bass lake that brought anglers and visitors to the region. Today Tenaha is a small, friendly Shelby County town — proud of its Tigers, its railroad roots, and a rhyme known across Texas.