The History of Carthage, Texas

Carthage was established in the 1840s as the seat of Panola County, in the rolling Piney Woods of far East Texas about 20 miles west of the Louisiana line. The early settlers, the Harris family, first named the town after Carthage, Tennessee. When the town was formally established in 1848, it was renamed for Carthage, Mississippi — a roundabout journey to the name it carries today.

For its first century, Carthage was a small farming and county-seat community, dependent on cotton, timber, and the rhythms of rural East Texas life. Its transformation would come, unexpectedly, from what lay deep beneath the ground.

During the Great Depression, a natural gas field was discovered near Carthage. After World War II, that field was developed in earnest — and proved to be one of the largest natural gas fields in the United States. The Carthage Gas Field transformed the town's economy and put Panola County on the map as a major energy producer.

The boom brought new wealth and people: Carthage grew from about 1,300 residents to roughly 5,000 as the gas industry developed. Natural gas production has remained central to the local economy ever since, and Panola County is still one of the leading gas-producing counties in Texas. The quiet farm town became, and remains, an energy town.

Carthage's other great legacy is musical. The town and surrounding Panola County produced two of country music's most important early stars. Tex Ritter, the singing cowboy of 1930s–1960s Western films — and the voice of the theme to the classic film High Noon — was a Panola County native who became a Country Music Hall of Famer. Jim Reeves, the smooth-voiced 'Gentleman Jim' whose hits like 'He'll Have to Go' helped define the Nashville Sound, also came from the Carthage area and is memorialized nearby.

That heritage is enshrined in the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, which opened in Carthage in 1998 alongside the Tex Ritter Museum, honoring Texas-born contributors to country music. For a small East Texas town to have produced two such legends is a remarkable distinction — and a point of deep local pride.

Today Carthage is a city of about 6,600, the seat of Panola County and still an energy town at heart, with natural gas production, poultry processing, healthcare, timber, and Panola College anchoring the economy. The community college, established in 1947, brings education and energy to the town. Carthage is also a diverse community, with significant Black and Hispanic populations alongside its white majority.

The town carries its history with pride — the music hall of fame, the gas heritage, and figures like Milton M. Holland, a Carthage-connected man who became the first native-born Texan to receive the Medal of Honor. Modern Carthage is perhaps best known regionally for something else entirely: its Carthage Bulldogs, one of the most successful high school football programs in Texas. Sitting near Toledo Bend and the Louisiana line, Carthage remains a proud, music-loving, football-loving East Texas town.