Discreet 24/7 Biohazard Remediation in Grapeland, TX

Grapeland is a city in northern Houston County, about twelve miles north of the county seat of Crockett — and despite its name, Houston County is nowhere near the city of Houston, sitting instead in the East Texas Piney Woods.

Houston County, created June 12, 1837, was the first county established by the Republic of Texas and is named for Sam Houston.

The settlement began about 1872 with the arrival of the Houston and Great Northern Railroad, and was originally called Grapevine for the wild grape vines that flourished in the sandy soil and had to be cut to lay the tracks.

The name was changed to Grapeland in 1873 when residents applied for a post office, and the railroad turned over a 640-acre tract to the New York and Texas Land Company to develop as a townsite.

A fire razed fifteen downtown businesses in 1913, but the town promptly rebuilt in brick, and Grapeland has been incorporated since 1924.

Grapeland is known locally as the 'Queen City of the Sand Flats,' a nickname taken from the sandy soils of the surrounding East Texas countryside.

Thanks to its melon crops, Grapeland also promotes itself as the 'Watermelon Capital of East Texas,' while its older cash crops were cotton and then peanuts.

Grapeland has celebrated an annual Peanut Festival since 1945, now held in October, and a fiddlers' contest from the old 'Goober Carnivals' grew into the Labor Day Bluegrass Festival.

Salmon Lake Park, a roughly 100-acre park built around a spring-fed swimming lake, has hosted a long-running bluegrass festival for five decades, and the drive-through Grapeland Safari is another local attraction.

Grapeland's population was 1,465 at the 2020 census, and the 2010 census counted 786 housing units in the city.