Biohazard Cleanup Near West Murchison Murchison, TX

Murchison is a city in Henderson County, Texas, on State Highway 31, eight miles southwest of Athens, the county seat, and 27 miles west of Tyler.

Murchison is named for Confederate officer T. F. Murchison and developed as a station on the Texas and St. Louis Railway, the line later famous as the Cotton Belt.

Founded in 1877, Murchison shipped watermelons out of its railroad depot in its early years, and the town soon boasted a school, a post office, a cotton gin, several businesses, and churches.

Most early Murchison-area residents were farmers growing corn, cotton, and peaches, and the town once had its own newspapers, the Murchison X-Ray and the Murchison Star.

Murchison first appears in the U.S. census in 1970 with 432 residents, and its population peaked at 594 in the 2010 census.

The 2020 census counted 516 residents in Murchison living in 206 households, and the Census Bureau classified the entire city as rural.

Murchison's median age was 42.3 years in the 2020 census, and about one in five residents was 65 or older.

Public education in Murchison is provided by the Murchison Independent School District.

Murchison covers about 1.6 square miles of the Piney Woods country of East Texas, all of it land, at an elevation of about 466 feet.