"Keeweechic's Athens, TX" a Athens Travel Page by keeweechic

Athens is 73 miles south east of Dallas and is the largest city and county seat of Henderson County. It was established in 1850 on just a one sq mile piece of land. They say that Athens ‘never moved a peg’ until 1900. There were no improvements to the square, roads or even the houses.. life went on as it did in the towns early days. The early years brought about industry such as a cotton gin, cottonseed oil mill, a compress, newspaper, pottery and brick plant and of course the Railway. Cotton was the major agricultural crop right up until the 1930’s. When the Great Depression struck, farmers then had to shift to livestock and vegetable production. In 1928 oil and gas exploration in the area began.

Indians inhabited the area during prehistoric times. Over time, fossil remains of extinct horses and camels have been unearthed as well as pottery and remnants of an aboriginal culture which existed along the Trinity River thousands of years ago. The first Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century. The Caddo Indians were living here at that time and had the highest cultural development of any Texas Indians. They were agriculturalists and were into raising vegetables, sunflowers and tobacco. Apparently the Spanish and French explorers described this tribe of Indians as friendly.

Athens became the known as the ‘Black-eyed Pea Capital of the World’