Yorktown

Yorktown. Historic Overview. , (Panel 1) , Yorktown Texas was established as a small town in the spring of 1848 by Charles Eckhardt and Captain John York. The two gentlemen announced that ten acres would be deeded to the first ten settlers of this new town. A surveyor from Germany, Mr. Hartmann was the first man to take them up on this offer. The second family to settle in Yorktown was Hartmann's father-in-law, Johann Andreas Strieber. Soon after these two families established themselves as residents, more families came with the promise of land. Many of those original family names are still here in Yorktown today, Hartmann, Eckhardt, Gerhardt, Strieber, Kraege, Von Roeder, Riedel, and Gohmert. , Not only do these buildings still exist today, they are functioning businesses. If you look directly across Main Street you will see the Yorktown Museum which encompasses two of the original buildings (middle and right in the photo) while the other building is currently Main Florist and Gift Shop. The building with the Selz sign was our "general store" with the attached building (to the left in the photo) a bank., This view of the park (right) is interesting because it shows a small section of the firehouse (far right) with a partial view of a two story gazebo. At one time the bottom of the gazebo was open for dancing while bands played music on the second floor, the basement was used as our public library. Below is a different view of the same gazebo., 1872 Statistics , Population of Yorktown - 360 , Average wages for carpenters, $1.75-2.00 , Average wages for day laborers, $.75 -1.00 , Flour, per barrel 11.00 , Beef, per pound $.035-.04 , Pork, per pound $.05-.08 , Indian Corn, per barrel $1.00-1.25, Here is picture of Main Street during a Fall Fair during the month of October. If you stand in front of City Hall and look to your right you will see these same buildings standing today., (Panel 2) , Today we have a large concrete bridge spanning the creek but, in the past the bridge was built out of wood and handcrafted. These two pictures give you an idea of the workmanship that went into creating a bridge that allowed the town to grow and enhance mobility for the residents of Yorktown., On the left hand side of the photo above is a building that was known as the Horned Palace as the walls were covered with the horns of various animals, the building still exists but unfortunately it is no longer open., Before the larger cars of today, the smaller cars of the past were able to park along Main Street as they are shown in these two photographs circa 1950's., Here are two great photographs of the fire station. Our current fire station is in the same location as the one shown here. The picture to the right is a different view of the fire station as well as the town's water tower at the time. The Yorktown Public Library is now located where the water tower is seen in this photo. Both the fire station and the public library are located on the southeast corner of this park.