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Eugene
Sandow, with fellow performers circa 1893.
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History in
a Pecan Shell
Once called Freezeout, Texas by mule-driving freighters who passed
through the area from the coast, it seemed to cater to them with an
abundance of saloons and a racetrack.
The community was granted a post office in 1873 and the name submitted
was that of solid citzen Emil Miller. Miller had donated a lot for
the town’s first school and in his honor, the community was called
Millerton. The post office closed, reopened and finally closed for
good in 1891. Mail for the town came through Rockdale.
In 1918 a six-mile spur was run from the International Great Morthern
mainline to the lignite mine owned by the Federal Fuel Company. Bankruptcy
left the siding unfinished. McAlester Fuel Company bought out Federal
Fuel’s holdings in 1922. Since they “owned’ the town, the executives
felt that a renaming was in order. Times being what they were, the
company chose the name of a Prussian-born strongman that was being
promoted in New York by Florenz Ziegfeld (later famous for the Ziegfeld
Follies). The namesake, Eugene Sandow, was considered to be the father
of body-builders.
The abandoned railroad line was completed and the Rockdale, Sandow
and Southern Railroad was doing business by 1923.
Lignite from the mine supplied the University of Texas and Texas A&M
University, as well as other electric-power producers.
Natural gas, was cheaper than coal and in time the mine closed. After
WWII a process
was invented for carbonizing lignite and the Aluminum Company of America
(Alcoa) built a plant.
The town evolved into a plant, but did not survive as a town. Most
Alcoa employees live in nearby Rockdale and today the plant is ringed
by a large fence that stretches for miles. A huge shovel can sometimes
be seen mining the lignite from a huge open pit. |
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The
town's namesake Eugene Sandow
1889 portrait by Henry Van der Weyde
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