24/7 Trauma & Biohazard Cleanup Near North Mart Mart, TX

Mart is a small incorporated city 18 miles east of Waco on State Highway 164, straddling the line between McLennan and Limestone Counties in Central Texas.

Mart was known as Willow Springs in the 1870s, but when a post office was granted in 1880 the name was changed to Mart because residents expected the community to become an important market - a 'mart' - for the surrounding cotton country.

Residents voted to incorporate Mart with a mayor-council government in 1901 and to establish an independent school district, and by 1914 the town had three cotton gins, a cotton oil mill, an ice factory, and both a daily and a weekly newspaper.

Mart boomed with the railroad era, reaching a peak population of about 3,800 in 1929, but slow decline followed as rail service shrank, and the tracks through town were eventually abandoned entirely in the late 1960s.

The 2020 census counted 1,748 people, 657 households, and 450 families in Mart, down from 2,209 residents in 2010, with a median age of 38.8 years.

Despite its small size, Mart covers only about 1.3 square miles and was ahead of most towns its size in the early 1900s, with paved roads, electricity, and telephone service.

Mart students attend schools in the Mart Independent School District, and the Texas Department of Juvenile Justice operates the McLennan County State Juvenile Correctional Facility on unincorporated land near the city.

Actor Jesse Plemons, known for Friday Night Lights, Breaking Bad, and Fargo, was raised in Mart.

Mart is the hometown of former University of Texas and NFL wide receiver Quan Cosby and of Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter Cindy Walker.

Soul-blues singer Frankie Lee was born in Mart, and the city is also associated with E. Donnall Thomas, the 1990 Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine.