Overton, TX

Overton is an East Texas city straddling Rusk and Smith counties, laid out in 1873 for a railroad junction and named for landowner Frank Overton. Before the town, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek people knew the area as Tiyuk Hekia, or Standing Pine. The Henderson and Overton Branch Railroad arrived in the mid-1870s, drawing businesses from nearby communities the line bypassed; the town’s post office opened in the same founding year. Overton was a farming center until the East Texas oilfield reached it around 1930, sending the town through a sharp boom. The city still carries the older rail-town outline across two counties.