The History of Wells, Texas

Wells owes its existence to the railroad. Between 1882 and 1885 the Kansas and Gulf Short Line built north to south through Cherokee County, giving rise to a string of new towns — Bullard, Mount Selman, Craft, Dialville, Forest, and Wells among them. When the railroad reached Wells in 1885, the community grew up around the new railway in the heart of the Piney Woods.

Like its neighbors, Wells was positioned to prosper as a shipping point for the farms, ranches, and timber of the surrounding country. But its early growth would be held back by an unexpected obstacle just outside town.

Shortly after the railroad was completed, the state penitentiary established a satellite camp just outside Wells to produce charcoal for the state-run iron works at Rusk, the county seat. The iron works needed charcoal to fuel its furnaces, and the forests around Wells supplied the wood.

The presence of a prison camp, however, discouraged many would-be settlers, and Wells remained small while the camp operated. It wasn't until after 1900, when the charcoal camp closed, that the town was free to grow. The episode is a distinctive chapter in the town's past — a reminder of the state's old prison-and-industry operations in East Texas.

With the charcoal camp gone, Wells boomed in the 1910s. The First State Bank of Wells opened in 1913, and by the following year the population had reached 300. The community incorporated during the 1920s, and by 1936 Wells reported 475 residents and twenty businesses — a thriving little town serving the surrounding area.

Farming, cattle ranching, and lumber became the principal industries, with logging camps working the timber of southern Cherokee County. Through the decades Wells settled into life as a small rural town on U.S. 69, anchored by its single-campus Wells ISD school and its location between Tyler to the north and Lufkin to the south. Today it remains a quiet community proud of its railroad-and-timber heritage.