Rails and roads15 cards: 6 firsts, 2 claimed firsts and 7 beginnings
The railroads and their shops, the brick streets, the first paved roads, a streetcar, a bus terminal and the airport.
- The first try at a railroad: a charter, and no trackThe Dallas and Tyler Railroad’s charter expired unbuilt.
- The Tyler Tap Railroad is chartered23 citizens applied, led by Richard B. Hubbard and James P. Douglas.
- The first railroad reaches TylerThe Houston and Great Northern, in 1873 or 1874.
- The Governor Hubbard brings in the Tyler Tap’s first trainOn October 1, 1877, the Tyler Tap’s only locomotive, the Governor Hubbard, steamed into Tyler with the line’s first train.
- The railroad puts its shops and hospital in TylerMachine shops and a hospital for the Texas and St. Louis Railway.
- The Cotton Belt, called the first Southwest railroad to burn oilWood-fired locomotives, converted to Corsicana oil.
- Red brick goes down on Tyler’s streetsThe city’s documentation says July 2, 1906; another account, around 1912.
- Tyler Traction runs its first streetcar, to the fairAt the end of September 1913, the Tyler Traction Company’s first streetcar headed west on Elm Street to the fairgrounds, and more than 1,300 people rode the cars for that year’s fair opening.
- Voters fund the county’s first paved roadsA $1,000,000 bond; the first concrete road followed in 1921.
- The Dixie Highway, the county’s first hard-surface roadTyler to Winona, of iron ore, gravel, asphalt and limestone.
- Tyler’s airport opens on Highway 64Named Rhodes Field in 1934, then Pounds Field in World War II.
- The Blackstone Building holds Tyler’s first union bus terminalArt Deco on North Broadway, with oil companies upstairs.
- Delta flies from Tyler againService resumed in 1946 and ran until 1957.
- Adopt-a-Highway starts in TylerAdopt-a-Highway started in Tyler.
- The Cotton Belt, called the first railroad to go all dieselSo says its Tyler-based president’s memoir.