The 58th Park Springs reunion is Sunday, Sept. 2, in the Fellowship Hall of Victory Baptist Church, Texas 101, in Park Springs.
Registration, a potluck lunch and visiting is at noon, and ceremonies begin at 2 p.m. Topics include greetings and introductions, the life and times from 1893-2012 and families, school and golden rule days, neorology and music.
Surveyor Thomas Jefferson McKenzie filed the plat of the town of Park Springs for record at Wise County Clerk’s Offce in Decatur March 27, 1893, under the direction of three Montague County entrepreneurs.
Zachary Taylor Lowrie, J.H. Matthews and A.G. Turner of Bowie had purchased land from Thomas Jefferson Lakey with the intention to build a water-stop town for the Rock Island Railroad, which was building a line from Chicago to Fort Worth. They named the town Park Springs.
Lot sales were good, and soon a thriving community was formed. The Waggoner Gin and the Park Springs Gin operated a thriving business until the boll weevil hit.
Park Springs built a school, and a lumber yard, blacksmith shop and four grocery stores soon dotted the landscape. A caf and drugstore came, and the Woodmen of the World built a two-story building on Lakey Avenue. The bank came, was robbed and closed.
From 1893 until the early 1920s, the town prospered. Then came the Stock Market Crash and Great Depression. The decade 1929-1939 was a tough one. Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and we were in another World War.
Park Springs never recovered from these shocks. The high school graduated its last class in 1948. The Post Office held on a little longer but closed a year or two later. Down went the population as people continued to move away.
Several people who passed through Park Springs retained a fondness for the place. And in 1954, they organized a homecoming and reunion. For 58 years, they have gathered on the Sunday before Labor Day to once again relive their “precious moments.”
Organizers invite the community to bring their friends and relatives to “relive the good old days” through storytelling, food and fellowship.
