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. When the town was laid out as the permanent county seat in 1848, Spearman Holland is credited with naming it for Carthage, Mississippi — 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 to roughly 5,000 residents by the 1950s 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 Civil War soldier (Wikipedia links him to the Carthage area, though the Handbook of Texas says he was probably born in Austin) who became the first African American Medal of Honor recipient from Texas. 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.