Groveton, Texas (55 miles SW of Nacogdoches, 127 miles N of Houston), is the Trinity County Seat. According to TexasEscapes.com:
The Trinity County and Sabine Pass Land and Railway Company is credited with Groveton’s birth in 1881. The company built a mill and platted a townsite named Grovetown after a stand of trees. Residents preferred the name without the w and the current spelling came into being.
There's not much left of old Groveton (perhaps there was nothing to begin with).
Based on its numerous ghost signs, this old building may have once been a general store and/or service station. Today it houses an antiques store:
The owner of the antique store came out as I was taking pictures of and generally drooling over the neon sign. She told me it is from the 1940s and still lights up. Unfortunately, the wiring begins to smoke after it's been turned on for a while. And it's for sale - $5,000. 
I doubt anyone will ever see this, but here's a little about Groveton. It's my home town. My brother still lives there.
ReplyDeleteI'll give you a little background on the pictures. Perry's was a sort-of department store. When I saved my money back in the '60s (I was about 10 or 11), I could go there and buy toys. It had a variety of sundries, fabrics, etc. My friends and I rode our bikes along the sidewalk because it had great ramps for popping wheelies on our Sting-Rays. The other store fronts heading east on Highway 287 were vacant even in the '60s.
Continue east on 287, you come to the main drag. Turn right on Pearl and at the end of the square would be the old Grove Theater. To the east of it would be the Dominey's insurance office, the old MacFarland's TV repair shop and my grandfather's old hardware store, which later became a grocery and feed store, which my father owned for a while. To the west was a beauty shop and laundromat.
Coming back up the square from the Grove was a clothing store on the corner, some other shops, the old post office, my great aunt's clothing store and the Grove Cafe on the corner of Pearl and 287. The cafe, which we also ran for a while, burned down and is now an empty lot.
The building with the Ford sign was a junk shop (antiques store) even back then. It had been Ford farm implements store at some point. The ghost Dr. Pepper sign on the side referred to Sheffield's, which I don't remember, but my grandmother(born 1905)did.
I'll go back to the original post and see if I can remember anything else. Groveton doesn't have much, but it does have a pretty courthouse.