ROCKDALE, TEXAS

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Rockdale Hotels

History in a Pecan Shell

In 1873 as the International-Great Northern Railroad was laying track between Hearne and Austin, local businessmen sold 400 acres of land to the railroad to plat a townsite. The town lots were auctioned in the fall of 1873 and the railroad arrived in early 1874. The honor of naming the new town fell to Mrs. B. F. Ackerman who named it after a specific boulder said to be 20 feet in circumference and nearly 12 feet high.

The arrival of the railroad made Rockdale Milam County’s first major railroad connection. The population swelled to 1,700 by the mid 1880s.

Lignite coal was extracted from several area mines in the 1890s and in 1891 the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway became the town’s second railroad. Coal mining became more important to the economy with an estimated 7,000 ore cars leaving Rockdale weekly.

With the discovery of a (shallow) oilfield in 1920, lignite mining declined and a refinery was built. After WWII the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) opened a plant here – occupying most of what was the town of Sandow, Texas.

From 2,300 residents in 1954, the population grew to 6,300 in four short years. In 1959 Rockdale’s north-south rail line was abandoned. Lignite mining continued through the 1970s.

The population of Rockdale in the early 1960s was around 4,500, growing to 5,810 by the late 1980s.

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