Preserving the past in Calvert
By Tricia Parker
Co-editor
Calvert’s most striking land
mark is the red and white Dairy
Queen on the edge of town. At
first glance, the rest of the town
is so brown and tumbledown,
it’s easy to drive by, eye-un-
caught, past feed stores and
billboards on the way to the
four-block area residents call
downtown. But treasures are
hidden, like bargains in the
town’s stores — they just take a
little digging to find.
Calvert was founded in 1868
along what is now Highway 6.
Built to take advantage of the
new Houston and Central Texas
Railroad, the town boomed to
2,500 residents when nearby
Sterling relocated to Calvert to
take advantage of the conve
nient transportation.
With settlers from Germany,
France, Ireland and China, Cal
vert quickly became as cosmo
politan as any little town had a
right to be. Back then, the
town’s main claim to fame was
that it was home to the world’s
largest cotton gin, built in the
1870s. The prosperity that the
railroad and cotton brought al
lowed Calvert’s citizens to
maintain an opera company, a
theatre and even a Sanger Har
ris which thrived side by side
with other businesses in Main
Street’s narrow Victorian store
fronts.
t one time, Calvert was big
ger than Dallas even thought
about being,” says Anne Lock
hart, an employee of the Calvert
Chamber of Commerce.
But by the turn of the cen
tury, Calvert, like many small
East Texas towns, was all
boomed out. The greater part
of Main Street burned down in
1902 and contributed to the de
cline. The cotton gin burned
four years later and yellow fever
broke out. Falling prices and
demand for cotton steadily re
duced the population to the
1,200 it is today.
But Calvert may be staging a
comeback. Lockhart says abun
dant coal and lignite reserves
will bring new industry to the
town. The construction of a
power plant nearby is also ex
pected to bring new jobs to the
area.
“Every time there’s some-
Calvert grew up around the
railroad (right) and cotton in
the 1860s. Once the fourth
largest city in Texas with a
population of 10,000, Calvert’s
population now numbers
around 1,200. Yellow fever ep
idemics, the decline of cotton
and the movement of the rail
road north to Dallas were
some of the reasons for the
decline. Large homes like the
one built by Minnie Walker
Burnitt in 1909 (above) stand
as testimony to Calvert’s hey
days.
thing in the news about the
power plant,” she says, “we get
a whole bunch of calls from
continued on p.8
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