Joaquin

Joaquin is on U.S. Highway 84 and the Southern Pacific Railroad fourteen miles northeast of Center in northeastern Shelby County. It was founded in 1885, when Benjamin Franklin Morris donated 100 acres to the Houston, East and West Texas Railway on condition that a railroad station be constructed on the land. The station and the community that grew up around it were named for Morris's grandson Joaquin Morris. A post office was established there in 1886 with Erastus F. Sayers as postmaster. By 1890 the community had several stores and a population estimated at 100. Joaquin became a shipping point for lumber and cotton and by 1914 had a sawmill, a bank, a gin, a mill, a newspaper (the Plaindealer), and a population estimated at 350. It was incorporated by 1940, when it had a population of 487, which grew to an estimated 584 by the early 1950s. As agriculture in the area declined, the population fell by 1968 to an estimated 461, but Toledo Bend Reservoir rejuvenated the town, and in 1988 Joaquin had a population estimated at 969 and fifteen rated businesses. In 1990 its population was 805. The population was 925 in 2000.