Elkhart, TX

Elkhart is an Anderson County town with a church, rail, and farm-shipping history in southern East Texas. Daniel Parker’s Pilgrim Primitive Baptist Church was constituted in 1833 in Illinois, brought eleven members to Texas in 1834, and became the center of Parker’s Settlement. The Old Pilgrim Church site, marked by a replica and a Texas historical marker, remains west of town. Elkhart Garden of Memories Cemetery records descendants of early settlers and veterans from the Civil War through Desert Storm, giving the surrounding countryside a long local memory.

Railroad work gave Elkhart a second center. International-Great Northern passenger and freight trains moved tomatoes, cotton, and pulpwood from local sawmills; the depot served both trains and trucks. U.S. 287 now runs through town, north to Palestine and south toward Grapeland and Crockett, while Elkhart Independent School District serves local students. The strongest local bearings are still the church site, the rail corridor, the highway, and the farm products that once moved through the depot.