Marshall, Texas

In the early 1900s, trainloads of westward-bound immigrants stopped briefly at the Texas and Pacific (T&P) Depot, located in today’s Ginocchio Historic District. To accommodate feeding several hundred customers each day, the staff at the beautiful Ginocchio Hotel set up tables in its lobby and ballroom. The historic T&P Depot, built in 1912 to replace an older depot, is both an active Amtrak station and railroad museum. A few blocks to the south is the magnificent 1901 Harrison County Courthouse, which was restored through the Texas Historical Commission’s (THC) Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program. Home of the Harrison County Historical Museum, the courthouse should not be missed, especially during the famous Wonderland of Lights throughout the last five weeks of every year.

Explore the lives of four generations of one family at the THC’s Starr Family Home State Historic Site. The site’s centerpiece is Maplecroft, an 1870 Italianate house with early-19th-century furnishings. A surprise for many visitors to this Texas Main Street city, the Michelson Museum of Art displays the life work of Russian-American impressionist Leo Michelson (1887–1978). Wiley College, founded in 1873, was the first school west of the Mississippi River certified by the Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The campus was relocated to its current site in 1878.