The History of Alba, Texas

The first settler in the area was likely Joseph Simpkins, a gunsmith who arrived with his family from Missouri around 1843. He was followed by W. W. Dale, who settled on the creek that still bears the Dale name near the future townsite. For its early years the place was known as Simpkins Prairie, a rural farming locale on the open country of western Wood County.

This was frontier East Texas, a land of small farms and woods near the edge of the prairie. The settlement grew slowly through the mid-1800s, awaiting the railroad that would put it on the map and give it the name Alba.

In 1881 the Missouri, Kansas and Texas (Katy) Railroad built through, and the town took off. A post office opened late that year, the townsite was laid out by 1882, and stores sprang up to serve the influx of railroad-tie cutters. Accounts of how the name 'Alba' was chosen differ, but by 1896 the town counted around 300 residents, fifteen businesses, and three churches.

The real boom came with coal. Lignite was discovered nearby around 1900, and the Texas Short Line Railway was built in 1902–03 to ship it to Grand Saline. By 1911 several area mines were producing tens of thousands of tons a month, and Alba's population swelled toward 1,500. The town incorporated by the mid-1920s as a busy mining and trade center.

Alba's boom faded around the start of the Great Depression. Its banks closed, and the population fell sharply by the early 1930s. Oil was discovered just south of town in 1948, but the town never returned to its boom-era size, settling into the quiet small community it remains today.

Alba's modern identity is tied to water rather than coal. The creation of Lake Fork Reservoir to its north turned the area into one of the country's premier bass-fishing destinations, and Alba became a gateway to the lake. Today it is a small Wood County town of a few hundred people, anchored by the Alba-Golden schools and the steady draw of anglers headed for Lake Fork.