Transportation, also, Blackland Prairie. Railroads, Highways, Interstate, also, Rich Black Soil. Before the railroad arrived in Hunt County, farmers and merchants drove their products to railheads or steamboat ports by ox-drawn wagons. Roads were mostly unpaved and would often turn muddy and impassable when wet. Cotton was too costly and too much trouble to ship until the railroad came through Greenville. The first railroad in Greenville was the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway (M.K.&T.) in 1880, followed by the East Line in 1881. M.K.&T. added its Mineola Branch line in 1881. The M.K.&T. established a direct line from Dallas in 1886 which further cemented the importance of Greenville as a shipping hub for the county., Although it took a while for the surrounding communities to get paved streets (Commerce, 1920; Celeste, 1935) the first paved U.S. transcontinental highway passed through Greenville. Started in 1916 and named Bankhead Highway after U.S. Senator John Bankhead, the highway extended from Washington, D.C. to San Diego by way of Alabama, home of Senator Bankhead. Its path crossed approximately 850 miles of Texas, from Texarkana to El Paso. It was designated Texas State Highway 1 in 1917 by the Texas Highway Department and roughly followed what became U.S. 67 and U.S. 80. It was an engineered roadway for local and regional traffic, as well as military use. It brought a new industry, highway tourism, to Texas. State Highway 1 came through downtown Greenville on what is now U.S. 67., The Jefferson Highway, established in 1915, was named for President Thomas Jefferson. It was a result of the early twentieth century's Good Roads movement. Its route followed existing roads that extended from Winnipeg to New Orleans. In this way it passed through Minnesota, lowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana on different routes. It came through Greenville on what is now Hwy 69., Interstate 30 construction began in 1955, with part of it first opening in 1957 between Dallas and Fort Worth. The construction of 1-30 through Hunt County began in 1962. I-30 is the shortest two-digit Interstate with a number ending in zero in the Interstate System. In Greenville, I-30 is also known as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freeway. The effort to name this section of the highway after King first began with a resolution by City Council member Hattie Tennison, which passed in 1995. The name became official in 2010 with the unveiling of the new interstate signs., Captions , (Photo #1) Groundbreaking ceremony for first hard-paved road out of Greenville , (Photo #2) Groundbreaking ceremony of new paved road leading into Greenville, 1920 , (Photo #3) Aerial view of I-30, Wesley St., and downtown Greenville , Reverse Side , Hunt County is a part of the rich black soil known as the Texas Blackland Prairie that encompassed 12.6 million acres. It begins South of the Red River in North Texas, cutting through Central Texas, and ending South of San Antonio. Before Anglo settlement, the prairie featured tall native grasses such as Indian grass, bluestem, eastern grama grass, switch grass, paspalum, panicum and others. The expansive open grasslands also featured dense forestry of elm, Bois D'arc, oak and cottonwood trees., Hunt County depended on surface water (rain, creeks, and rivers) for most of their agricultural and household use. Farmers dug pools to collect water for livestock and built cisterns to collect water for domestic use. After world war one, some farmers began to build cisterns above ground made from 4-foot sheets of metal welded into large tanks 8 feet wide. These tanks could be stacked 3 high. When rural electricity was introduced, many homeowners installed small electric pumps to pump water out of the cisterns into the house, while water for the bathroom was pumped from the pool. Even by being careful, the cisterns and tanks often ran out of water in June or July. Those who ran out of water were forced to purchase it, usually at a nickel a barrel, from those few who had a surplus., In 1889, the Greenville Water and Electric Light Company constructed a dam on the Sabine River that created a large reservoir several miles upstream. That water was pumped into a large water tower and disbursed by gravity through the mains to the fire hydrants and homeowners. In 1910 there was a severe drought, and the Sabine went completely dry. The city of Greenville had to haul tanks of water in on the train. While Greenville did not have any useable underground water, the city of Commerce did and built a number of deep wells. In fact, downtown Commerce had several wells just for general public use., Captions , (Photo #1) Clymer Meadow Preserve , (Photo #2) Greenville's first electric light plant, built March 4, 1891