Biohazard Cleanup Near North Memphis Memphis, TX

Memphis is a city in the Texas Panhandle and the county seat of Hall County, settled in 1889 along the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway and incorporated in 1906.

Memphis got its name by accident: the Reverend J. W. Brice, while in Austin, saw a letter mistakenly addressed to 'Memphis, Texas' instead of Memphis, Tennessee and marked 'no such town in Texas' - the name was submitted to postal authorities, accepted, and a post office opened on September 12, 1890 with W. H. Robertson as postmaster.

Memphis won the 1890 county-seat election against Salisbury and Lakeview with just 84 votes, and businesses were later moved on wheels from Salisbury to the new county seat.

Frustrated that trains passed through without stopping, Memphis citizens smeared the rails with lye soap to force trains to halt, and the railroad built a depot in 1891.

The 2020 census counted 2,048 people in Memphis in 891 households - well below the town's 1930 peak of 4,257 residents.

Hall County is named for Warren D. C. Hall, who served as secretary of war of the Republic of Texas, and its limestone courthouse in Memphis was built in 1923 in the Texas Renaissance style.

Memphis grew as a cotton town: the Memphis Cotton Oil Company mill was established in 1907, and the city long served area farmers with cotton gins, a compress and a grain elevator.

The Memphis Democrat, the town's newspaper, has been published since 1908.

Memphis received a Carnegie library in 1912, and in 1926 it laid 50 blocks of brick street paving that remain a point of local pride along its tree-lined streets.

Heritage Hall, a museum of local history and natural science, occupies the old First National Bank building on the Memphis courthouse square.