Jacksonville Stories
Jacksonville, Texas in 1940
The year the next Jacksonville was being built.
Jacksonville entered 1940 with trains still moving through town, tomatoes still shaping the local economy, downtown stores serving the surrounding countryside, and the effects of the Great Depression still close enough to remember.
But look closer and another Jacksonville was already taking shape. Workers were building the Tomato Bowl. A new public library was beginning. Young men were learning to fly north of town. New factories were appearing. Schools were expanding. Jacksonville was changing while everyday life continued around it.
One Life Bridged Two Jacksonvilles
She remembered the Jacksonville that existed before this one.
In March 1940, one of Jacksonville’s oldest links to its first townsite died.
Melvina Ingle Chessher had lived through a version of Jacksonville that almost no one alive in 1940 could personally remember.
She had known the original Jacksonville near Gum Creek. When the community relocated toward the railroad in 1872, she moved with it. Local historical accounts connect Melvina and her husband with one of the earliest hotels in the relocated town.
By the time she died in 1940 at more than 100 years old, Jacksonville around her looked dramatically different from the settlement she had known as a younger woman.
Railroads crossed the city. Automobiles traveled its streets. Hospitals treated patients from the surrounding region. Students attended colleges and public schools. Tomatoes traveled from local fields into markets far beyond East Texas.
And Jacksonville was changing again.
The old Jacksonville had not disappeared. But pieces of the next Jacksonville were already being built.
A Town Between Eras
Jacksonville was still an agricultural town, but not only an agricultural town.
Trains, farms, packing sheds and produce remained part of everyday life. At the same time, public construction, manufacturing, aviation, healthcare and education were widening Jacksonville’s role in East Texas.
Railroads still mattered
Railroad tracks remained part of Jacksonville’s geography, commerce and daily soundscape decades after the town first moved toward the railroad.
Tomatoes shaped the season
Farmers, packing sheds, buyers, seasonal labor and shipping connected Jacksonville to a much larger produce market.
Jacksonville was building
Depression-era public projects were leaving permanent structures across the city, including athletic, educational and civic facilities.
Manufacturing was growing
Companies producing clothing, industrial products and school-bus bodies pointed toward a more diversified Jacksonville economy.
Downtown Jacksonville
Downtown was not a destination. Downtown was everyday Jacksonville.
Shopping, banking, eating, entertainment and business were concentrated in and around Jacksonville’s downtown streets.
Stores, drugstores, banks, restaurants, hotels and professional businesses served Jacksonville residents as well as families who traveled into town from farms and smaller communities around Cherokee County.
The Liberty Hotel became especially important during produce season. Historical accounts describe tomato buyers and shippers staying there while following the East Texas harvest. The hotel’s dining room also became part of Jacksonville’s social life.
Commerce Street connected downtown business with the railroad, packing operations and agricultural trade. Parts of West Commerce became associated with the buying and selling of tomatoes during the height of the season.
A complete Jacksonville business directory for 1940 has not yet been located online. Surviving 1941 Jacksonville newspaper advertisements provide a near-contemporary view of the early-1940s business district, including drugstores, banks, cafes, hardware stores, jewelers, furniture stores and grocery businesses. Those 1941 records are used as early-1940s context and are not presented here as a literal 1940 business directory.
When Tomatoes Ran the Town
Jacksonville’s signature crop had a difficult year.
Tomatoes had helped make Jacksonville known far beyond Cherokee County, but the crop also exposed local farmers and businesses to weather, prices and markets they could not control.
A damaging freeze
Contemporary reporting described a hard April freeze that destroyed large numbers of tomato plants already placed in fields around Jacksonville. Farmers rushed to find replacement plants and replant.
The market weakened
After farmers replanted, the tomato market faced another problem. Prices fell sharply during the shipping season, putting pressure on growers and packing operations across the area.
Catfish Row
West Commerce became associated with the seasonal tomato trade. Historical recollections describe farmers bringing tomatoes into town while buyers inspected loads and negotiated purchases.
Tomato season did not happen somewhere outside Jacksonville. It moved through downtown streets, hotels, rail facilities, packing sheds, farms, businesses and household economies.
Building Again
Construction was changing Jacksonville’s physical landscape.
The Great Depression had weakened local finances, but public works, local investment and school construction were producing facilities that would remain part of Jacksonville for generations.
The Tomato Bowl rises from the hillside
WPA labor helped reshape the hillside where Jacksonville’s new football stadium was built. Local red iron-ore rock became part of the structure, and material from the former school site was reused.
The stadium was still unfinished when Jacksonville played there in September 1940.
Read Jacksonville ISD’s Tomato Bowl history →A new public library begins
Jacksonville voters had approved a library project in 1939. WPA construction began in 1940 using native stone from the region.
The building opened the following year and became another permanent civic institution created during this period.
Read Jacksonville Public Library history →Jacksonville ISD was expanding
A major late-1930s school construction program included new educational and athletic facilities. Those projects were still reshaping Jacksonville as the new decade began.
Love’s Lookout grew too
Love’s Lookout had already benefited from public improvements. Additional land was donated in 1940, expanding a place that would become one of the area’s best-known landmarks.
Manufacturing Jacksonville
Jacksonville was beginning to make more than agricultural products.
Agriculture remained important, but manufacturing businesses were becoming another part of the city’s economic identity.
Marja Brassiere Company had been founded in Jacksonville in 1938. Historical accounts describe a small beginning that eventually developed into a major local manufacturer employing hundreds of people.
In January 1940, Industrial Iron Works established a Jacksonville operation on West Larissa Street. Among its products were school-bus bodies.
Those businesses represented something Jacksonville would see more of after World War II: an economy increasingly supported by factories and manufacturing alongside agriculture, retail and services.
Marja begins
A small Jacksonville sewing operation began growing into one of the city’s notable manufacturing companies.
School-bus manufacturing
Industrial Iron Works established a Jacksonville operation on West Larissa Street.
Manufacturing expands
The decades after 1940 would bring additional factories, plastics and industrial employers into Jacksonville.
Pilots Over Jacksonville
Before America entered World War II, Jacksonville was already training pilots.
Jacksonville Municipal Airport had opened during the 1930s along U.S. Highway 69 north of town.
In 1940, Lon Morris College began operating a contract flying school at the Jacksonville airfield for U.S. Navy Reserve pilot training.
This was before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and before the United States formally entered World War II.
Jacksonville residents going about ordinary life in 1940 could therefore look north and see another sign of a rapidly changing world: young pilots training over East Texas.
The airfield itself would eventually undergo another transformation. In the 1950s, the former airport property became an industrial site.
Black Jacksonville in 1940
There was not one single experience of Jacksonville.
Jacksonville in 1940 existed under racial segregation. Black and white residents could live in the same city while attending separate schools and moving through different institutions and social spaces.
Fred Douglass School was an important center of Black education in Jacksonville. Local histories describe a larger Fred Douglass school built in the Lincoln Park Addition in 1930 after an earlier school had served Black children during the 1920s.
Historical accounts describe hundreds of students and a Black teaching staff serving the Jacksonville community during this period.
Black churches were also important community institutions. Texas Black newspapers from the years surrounding this period carried Jacksonville community news, church activities, family announcements and other information that rarely appeared with the same depth in white newspapers.
Reconstructing Black Jacksonville requires more than mentioning segregation. It means identifying the schools, churches, businesses, families and neighborhoods that made up everyday community life. That research is continuing.
When we ask what Jacksonville was like in 1940, we also have to ask: what was Jacksonville like, and for whom?
Everyday Jacksonville
History was happening between ordinary errands, meals, work and school.
The Jacksonville of 1940 was not experienced as a history lesson. It was home.
Downtown stores
Residents traveled downtown for groceries, clothing, hardware, medicine, furniture, banking and other everyday needs.
Going to the movies
Jacksonville supported movie theaters before and during the early 1940s. The Palace Theatre became one of the city’s remembered entertainment landmarks.
Cafes and hotel dining rooms
Restaurants, cafes and hotel dining rooms served local residents, travelers, farmers, businesspeople and seasonal produce buyers.
The town ran on schedules
Trains, packing sheds, factories, sawmills, farms, stores and schools created a daily rhythm very different from Jacksonville today.
Nan Travis served the region
Jacksonville’s hospital system had already grown from the small sanitarium established in 1919 into an important regional healthcare presence.
Churches anchored community life
Churches served as religious institutions, meeting places, social networks and community anchors across Jacksonville.
Surviving Jacksonville newspaper advertisements from 1941 show plate lunches advertised for as little as 25 to 35 cents and groceries promoted at prices that look extraordinarily low today. These advertisements are useful for understanding the early 1940s, but they should not be presented as exact 1940 prices without a 1940 Jacksonville source.
The Year Between Two Jacksonvilles
Nobody announced that Jacksonville was changing.
There was no single morning when the old Jacksonville ended and a new Jacksonville began.
It happened while farmers brought tomatoes into town.
While workers shaped a football stadium into a hillside.
While stone was being laid for a new public library.
While school-bus bodies were being built on West Larissa.
While sewing machines ran inside a young manufacturing company.
While Navy Reserve pilots trained north of town.
While students attended separate schools in a segregated city.
While downtown stores opened their doors each morning and trains continued moving through Jacksonville.
The Jacksonville people knew in 1940 was still very much alive. But everywhere you looked, pieces of the next Jacksonville were already being built.
Sources & Further Reading
Reconstructing Jacksonville in 1940
This story combines contemporary reporting, historical records, archival collections and later local histories. Sources are separated from interpretation so additional records can be added as they are found.
This story is still being researched.
A complete 1940 Jacksonville city directory has not yet been located online. Exact locations of some businesses, theaters and community institutions remain under research. Surviving sources also preserve some parts of Jacksonville’s history much better than others.
Jacksonville TX Our Town will update this page as additional directories, photographs, newspapers, maps, family records and reliable first-hand accounts are located.
Help Reconstruct 1940 Jacksonville
Does your family have a piece of this story?
Old photographs, business advertisements, city directories, church records, school programs, yearbooks, postcards, maps, letters and family stories may contain details that do not survive anywhere else.
If you have a Jacksonville photograph, document, correction or first-hand family story connected to this period, we would like to hear from you.
Jacksonville Stories
One year is only one piece of the story.
Explore the full Jacksonville history timeline, from Gum Creek and the railroad relocation through agriculture, education, industry and the city Jacksonville became.