Only graveyard remains from East Texas town of Walling’s Ferry

TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - A small graveyard in East Texas is almost all that remains of a once-thriving river port town on the banks of the Sabine River, just north of what is now Easton; it was once known as Walling’s Ferry.

A small graveyard, with some of the markers no more that piled stones, is the final remnant of a once bustling river stop.

“It was a fairly large city, some estimates are it was 10,000 people, so it was fairly large,” said Gregg County Historical Museum archivist Kelly Green.

Walling’s Ferry is thought to be one of the earliest settlements in East Texas.

“It was as very early, possibly 1820,” Green said.

It was known for many years both as Walling’s Ferry and as Camden. The ferry operation was licensed by the Mexican government in the early 1830s, before Texas was a republic.

In 1844 they had an eight-room log tavern, a hotel and more.

“There were even steamboats calling at the port back in the day - hotels, bars, restaurants,” explained the archivist.

Some of the graveyard headstones go back to when the city was founded. So, what happened?

One of the answers is the Sabine River. The area spawned mosquitoes, and malaria was rampant along low-lying river bottoms.

“No doctors in the area, and they didn’t know what caused malaria, and there was no cure,” Green said.

By the Civil War, the settlement began to decline, and another death-knell came.

“When the railroad came, a timber company had sprung up, and the railroad probably led to the demise of the ferry. In this case, the town died,” said Green.

By the late 1860s most of Camden’s remaining residents were gone.

The Camden graveyard does have a notice of existence with the Texas Historical Commission.

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