Cushing

Cushing, on State Highway 204 and Farm Road 225, eighteen miles northwest of Nacogdoches in extreme northwestern Nacogdoches County, was founded in 1902, when the Texas and New Orleans Railroad announced that it would lay track. The community was named for Edward Benjamin Cushing, an official with the railroad. A local post office opened in 1902, and the town was laid out the following year. In 1904 regular passenger service began on the railroad. The railroad spurred the development of the lumbering industry in the northwestern corner of the county, and Cushing quickly developed as a shipping center for the numerous sawmills in the region. The town incorporated in 1905 and by 1914 had a bank, a hotel, a weekly newspaper named the Enterprise, twenty-eight businesses, and an estimated population of 600. By 1925 the population reached a high of 1,500. During the 1930s the town began to decline, as a result of the Great Depression and the deforestation of the surrounding area. By 1950 the population fell to 473. Afterward the number of residents remained steady, but many of the town's businesses have closed. In 1965 Cushing still had thirty-seven rated businesses; by the early 1990s it had seven. The reported population in 1990 was 465. It grew to 637 by 2000.