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PONTA,
TEXASCherokee
County, East Texas
Just East of Highway 110
9 miles N of Rusk
21
miles N of Alto
6 miles S of New
Summerfield
14 miles SE of Jacksonville
Population: 50 (2000) |
| Mud
Creek out of its banks in the early 1900s | Photo
courtesy Arcadia Publishing and
The Cherokee County Historical Commission
|
History in a Pecan
Shell
Ponta
began life in 1901 as "Donaho." When it was bypassed by the Texas and New Orleans
Railroad, another town was soon surveyed. Named "Hubb" after the surveyor Hubbard
Guinn, storekeeper Robert Montgomery changed the name to the Latin word for bridge
when he becme postmaster in 1903. Mr. Mongomery had moved his business from Donaho
and had a vested interest in the community's future. Although the name was Latin,
the watercourse was still over Mud Creek.
Ponta got a bank and before long
it developed all the essential businesses for an up-and-coming town. They even
had a doctor and a Masonic Lodge. Like the rest of East Texas, timber was the
major economic engine until the twenties when people started noticing the forests
rapidly being depleted.
The town lost its post office in 1972 and a decline
set in. The bank failed and the cotton gin closed. Both the doctor and druggist
died and even the Masonic lodge moved (to New Summerfield). In the1980s, Ponta
only had two churches and a few houses left from its glory days.
The population
has been given as 50 since 1970.
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© John Troesser |
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