Union Grove, TX

Union Grove is a small Upshur County city at the junction of U.S. 271 and Farm Road 1844, a few miles north of Gladewater. John O’Byrne, an Irish settler, built a plantation home and sawmill here in the 1880s, and a school was operating near his house by 1886. The community remained modest until oil discovered nearby in the 1930s turned it into a boomtown, filling the roads with workers, stores, churches, and school families.

That boom faded, but the school stayed at the center of town life. Union Grove ISD dates to 1907 and now runs a 2A program with elementary, junior-high, and high-school offerings, career and technical courses, fine arts, and athletics. The district sits off U.S. 271, close enough to Gladewater for larger errands while keeping its own campus-centered rhythm. Union Grove’s local scoop is the way oil changed the place in one generation, then the school carried the community through the long afterlife of the boom.