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Willis, a lumbering and agricultural market town, is on the Missouri
Pacific Railroad eight miles north of Conroe in north central Montgomery
County. In 1870, as the Houston and Great Northern Railroad began
surveying Montgomery County's first rail line, Galveston merchants
Peter J. and Richard S. Willis, landholders in Montgomery County,
donated a town site to the railroad along the proposed route.
By 1884, in addition to its various schools and churches, Willis
boasted several steam-powered saw and grist mills, two cotton gins,
a brickyard, a saloon and gambling house, a Grange hall, numerous
grocery and dry-goods stores, and a population of 600. During the
late nineteenth century the Willis area became the leading tobacco
growing region in the state; before the lifting of the tariff on
Cuban tobacco killed the boom in the early twentieth century, Willis
supported as many as seven cigar factories. As tobacco culture declined,
a boom in the production of timber and agricultural products kept
the town's economy thriving.
The town's growth came to a temporary halt, however, with the onset
of the Great Depression and the resulting slump in local timber
production. From an estimated 900 in 1929, population fell to an
estimated 750 by 1931. But an oil boom in central Montgomery County
that began southeast of Conroe in 1931 soon spread its effects to
the Willis area, bringing renewed economic activity and an influx
of population. Then, during World War II, the lumber industry and
agricultural activity revived. By the 1980’s the Willis area
was at last benefiting from the spillover effects of the postwar
booms of Houston and Conroe, but the economy remained based on lumbering
and agriculture.Above Information found in Handbook
of Texas Online, s.v. "WILLIS, TX," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/WW/hjw12.html
(accessed June 17, 2005).
Marker located at SH 75 and Fm 2432.
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