Ringgold

Ringgold is on U.S. Highways 81 and 82, twenty miles northwest of Montague in northwestern Montague County. Though Anglo-Americans had settled in the vicinity by the early 1870s, an organized community did not develop until the Rock Island line extended its tracks to the area in 1892. Joe Harris owned the land where the railroad intersected with the Missouri, Kansas and Texas line. He laid out a townsite and sold lots for fifty to seventy-five dollars, and the new town was at first named Harrisonia in his honor. When postal authorities rejected this name as too similar to Harrison-the name of at least one other Texas town-the community was instead called Ringgold, for the family name of Harris's wife. The Ringgold post office was established in 1892, and the next year a school opened, joining a number of businesses and a church to serve the estimated 300 residents. Because Ringgold was at the intersection of two rail lines, it quickly became a market center for the area. By the mid-1920s its population exceeded 400, and it had eighteen businesses. From at least the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s, the number of residents remained at around 350. By the mid-1970s, however, its population had dropped to 100, and it continued to be reported at that level through 2000.