Biohazard Cleanup Near West Waskom Waskom, TX

Waskom is a city in eastern Harrison County whose eastern edge is the Texas-Louisiana state line, about 19 miles east of the county seat of Marshall on U.S. Highway 80 and Interstate 20.

Waskom's nickname is 'The Gateway to Texas.'

The community was founded about 1850 as Powell Town, probably for Jonathan S. Powell, who held a land grant in the area, and it served as a midway point on the Dallas-to-Shreveport cattle and cotton trail.

The town became Waskom Station in 1872 and simply Waskom in 1881, renamed for J. M. Waskom, a director of the Southern Pacific Railroad who was instrumental in bringing the railroad through the community.

Waskom's post office opened in 1881, and a branch of a second railroad, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, was built through the community about 1900.

The 2020 census counted 1,910 residents and 589 households in Waskom, down from 2,160 residents in 2010.

In the 2020 census, Waskom's population was about 57 percent White, 24 percent Hispanic or Latino, and 13 percent Black.

The Waskom High School Wildcats won back-to-back Texas state football championships in 2014 and 2015.

In June 2019 Waskom became the first city in the United States to declare itself a 'sanctuary city for the unborn,' a designation later copied by other small towns.

Waskom is part of the Longview-Marshall combined statistical area and lies about 20 miles west of Shreveport, Louisiana, on Interstate 20.