Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Beckville, TX

Beckville is a small city in northwestern Panola County in East Texas, about eight miles northwest of Carthage, the county seat.

Beckville is named for Matthew W. Beck, an early settler who arrived in the area around 1850 and set up a store serving travelers on the road between Douglas and Shreveport.

Beckville's post office opened in 1857, and by 1885 the community had two churches, two steam gristmills, three general stores, a hotel, a blacksmith, and an estimated population of seventy-five.

When the Texas, Sabine Valley and Northwestern Railway was built through the county in 1886, Beckville's townspeople demanded such high prices for their property that railroad officials bypassed the town; the community then relocated to a new townsite laid out by Joe Biggs, and old Beckville was completely deserted.

Beckville's first school was built in 1889, and by 1897 the town had a three-teacher school with a total enrollment of 151 students.

A schoolhouse built in 1888 still stands next to the First Baptist Church in downtown Beckville, and railroad records describe it as one of the oldest schoolhouses in Texas.

Beckville's population reached 750 in 1914, and the town was incorporated by 1929, when it had a population of nearly 880.

A fire in 1917 destroyed part of Beckville's business district, and a drought in 1927 followed by the Great Depression cut the town's population to 453 by the mid-1930s.

Beckville had 722 residents at the 2020 census, living in 253 households, with a median age of 34.4 years.

Nearly half of Beckville's households — 46.2 percent — had children under the age of 18 living in them at the 2020 census.