Tatum, TX

Tatum is a Rusk-and-Panola County city built around the old Trammel’s Trace and Grand Bluff Road crossing. Albert Tatum arrived from Alabama in the 1840s with his family and enslaved laborers, then established the plantation that gave the later town its starting point. His son Paul “Uncle Fox” Tatum laid out the townsite and donated land for a church, school, and cemetery. The Santa Fe line arrived in 1882; Martin Creek Lake and a power plant added another chapter in 1971. Tatum is an East Texas place of pine roads, railroad, family history, and lake-country industry.