Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Edgewood, TX

Edgewood, in Van Zandt County, began with settlement in the 1840s at a spot called Barren Ridge along the old Dallas-to-Shreveport road, about two miles southeast of the present town.

The present town was born out of Van Zandt County's bitter county-seat feud: after Canton won the fight, its residents built a shipping depot on the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1878, nine miles north of Canton, and named the site Edgewood because it stood on the edge of the East Texas timberline.

Before it was Edgewood, the railroad stop was a woodcutting center known as Stevens Switch, and the town was platted and granted a post office in the late 1870s.

Edgewood grew into a cotton shipping center, but the collapse of cotton prices in the late 1920s ended that era; tomatoes became a sustaining local crop, and discovery of the Northeast Gas Field revived the town in the 1960s.

Edgewood's Heritage Park Museum of East Texas, created in 1976 as a Bicentennial project, preserves about twenty authentically restored historic structures, including a one-room schoolhouse, a log barn, a gas station, a barber shop, and a church, spread across three city blocks.

The museum hosts the annual Edgewood Heritage Festival, with living-history demonstrations and classic cars, on the second Saturday of November.

The City of Edgewood's official history counts more than 1,525 residents as of the 2020 Census, up from 1,441 people recorded in 2010.

Edgewood lies on U.S. Highway 80 roughly sixty miles east of Dallas, covering only about 1.4 square miles.

Edgewood is served by the Edgewood Independent School District, a four-campus district of roughly one thousand students headquartered on East Pine Street.