Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in New Boston, TX

New Boston was laid out in September 1876 after local businessman and railroad surveyor J. H. Smelser negotiated a depot on the Missouri Pacific line four miles north of the older town of Boston, whose merchants feared being bypassed by the railroad.

Because most of the people behind the new townsite came from Boston, the railroad town was named New Boston, the original settlement became Old Boston, and Bowie County ended up with three Bostons once the Post Office Department named a third courthouse site simply Boston.

New Boston got its post office in 1877 and grew fast — by 1884 it already had 400 residents, two churches, a school, several mills and gins, and its own newspaper, the New Boston Herald.

World War II transformed New Boston when the Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant and the Red River Army Depot were built just southeast of town, driving the population from 1,111 in 1940 to 2,688 in 1950.

New Boston sits on U.S. Highway 82 and Interstate 30 about twenty-one miles west of Texarkana in central Bowie County, near the Red River and the Arkansas state line.

A new Bowie County courthouse was dedicated in New Boston on March 4, 1986, even though Boston officially remained the county seat and the handsome 1889 courthouse there was abandoned.

New Boston had 4,612 residents in the 2020 census, down slightly from its 1990 peak of 5,057.

At the 2000 census New Boston had 4,808 people living in 1,968 households.

New Boston covers only about 3.3 square miles, all of it land, making it a compact railroad-born town.