A READER ASKS that we delve into the history of Gilmer’s downtown street paving, which was most recently in the news when Yamboree Parade Chairman Jeff Dodd explained why the streets were too dangerous to allow horses at the end of the parade.

The brick paving on three sides of the courthouse square — covered up by Hwy. 154 asphalt paving on the south side — is not as old as you might think.

I consulted my sister, historian Mary L. Kirby, who pointed me toward 1925. Microfilm records of the Daily Mirror from that year proved her correct.

Up until that time, the courthouse (not replaced with the present one until 1936), had no curbs or anything else to separate the un-landscaped grounds from the streets where farmers crowded in with their wagon loads of cotton during the harvest season, and on Saturdays for shopping the rest of the year.

The Gilmer square was notable — perhaps even notorious — for the deep sand that housed many fleas, among other drawbacks.

A PICTURE in Mary’s recent book, Gilmer, in the Images of America series, shows the east side of the square in 1914 with horse and mule teams awaiting instructions to haul gravel for the downtown streets.

This was done under the leadership of Mayor Tom Briggs, and no doubt was welcomed. But it was inadequate for the long term, since the automobile age was dawning.

A story on Oct. 9, 1925 reported that an election had been called on whether to pass a bond issue for paving the square as well as Buffalo and Tyler Streets from the square west to the Cotton Belt railroad tracks. The $25,000 bond issue would require a tax of $.25 per $100 valuation.

The Mirror editor, George Tucker, backed the bonds, writing, “The annual savings of damage to stocks of goods in Gilmer business by reason of the absence of so much dust would almost pay the interest on this amount invested in the pavement, to say nothing of the comfort and the improved appearance of the town.”

A HEADLINE on Oct. 28 said that the paving bonds had passed “overwhelmingly;” the vote was 207 to 48. The Mirror congratulated Mayor Dick Denman for his role in “another progressive movement to place Gilmer in the front ranks of Northeast Texas.” The editor pointed out that in Denman’s 4-year term, the city had been brightened with street lights, and water and sewer mains had been extended, resulting in a reduction in the insurance key rate.

The editor wrote that Denman had been helped by a progressive city council and a banker/financier, Louis Martin, as city secretary.

Women of the Twentieth Century Club, known then as now for their good works, volunteered to landscape the courthouse grounds — now defined for the first time.

THE COUNTY cotton crop was good in 1925 — 30,000 bales were produced — and it was a notable year all around.

The editor pushed to get a county agricultural agent position established. Commissioners court was reluctant to put up the county’s share to match state and federal funding, so the daily newspaper started a fund drive to make it happen. (Gilmer at that time was the smallest town in the U. S. to have a daily newspaper. The Daily Mirror had been started in 1916 to support a good roads bond issue.)

Good roads in those days meant gravel. A story reported happily that the State Highway Department had taken over the Jefferson Highway (now U. S. 271) and planned to imrpvoe seven miles north and two miles south of Gilmer.

A Gilmer-Marshall highway had been designated (now Hwy. 154) and the editor hoped that soon a highway to run west toward Quitman could replace the recently-closed Marshall and East Texas Railway, which had operated passenger trains. This would give the county highways to the four points of the compass, Tucker wrote.

A mass meeting to support the county agent office met with good response except for one man who said he didn’t want anyone telling him how to farm.

BY AUGUST A. W. Kinnard had been installed as the first county agent, and at the invitation of him and Mirorr Man Tucker, two important guests arrived. They were V. H. Scholffelmayer, agriculture editor of the Dallas Morning News, and David C. Harrow, editor of the Wall Street Journal. who had come down from New York to check out what he had heard about “this prosperous section” of Texas. They were taken into the country to see some of the fine cotton that had been entered in The Nwes’ More Cotton on Fewer Acres contest.

Another major story dealt with oil wells being drilled at Ore City to the east and Shady Grove to the southwest. When the Shady Grove well turned out to be “bone dry” and was plugged at 3,500 feet, the editor wwrote:

“Another hope of oil in Upshur County is gone like a sweet flatterer with a delusive touch. No doubt there is oil in Upshur County. They haven’t quite located the pool yet; let us hope, hope ever.”

OF COURSE it turned out that the south end of the county was “settin’ on the Woodbine” sand at those shallow levels. But it was many years before deeper drilling technology located the county’s rich natural gas deposits.

A harbinger of this development was a story March 16 about a Pritchett boy lighting a piece of paper with a match and dropping it into a water well, whereupon gas “exploded and flashed out.”

The year also saw the construction ot the new Post Office (now the Historic Upshur Museum) at a cost of $50,000, plus $10,000 for the lot.

Other, lesser 1925 stories were interesting. For sample:

N. J. Harrison’s fine Holstein cow was bitten by a mad dog. The cow was treated with serum, but still had to be killed.

In August the county jail was empty for the first time in years, so Sheriff Bryce had it fumigated.

IN NOVEMBER a salamander hole caused a leak in the dam of one of the Twin Lakes, and members of the Gilmer Boating and Fishing Club were called on to apply sandbags.

Mayor Denman declared a half-holiday for Tuesday, Nov. 17, when Gilmer played Longview for the district football title. Gilmer won the tied game by having the most first downs. The next week the locals lost the bi-district game to Highland Park at the Dallas Fair Park Stadiium, 35 to 6.

County Agent Kinnard sent what was believed to be a pre-historic crocodile fossil, found near Ore City, to Austin for examination by archaeologists. It turned out to be only rock.

The downtown paving started in 1926, but it was not until the next decade that serious paving of Gilmer residential streets began. But that’s another story.

sgreene@tatertv.com