Java, East Texas, Cherokee County ghost town. (original) (raw)

History in a Pecan Shell

The settlement is said to have been named for a petticoat lost (and evidently found) at a local dance. The garment had been recycled from an old coffee sack and had retained the stenciled name: Java

The area was first settled in the late 1840s and early 1850s by settlers from Alabama and Tennessee, but as a community, Java did�t expand until the 1890s, when prison crews from the Texas State Penitentiary in Rusk came to mine coal to fuel the state-owned iron furnace. A small trading post consisting of a general store and sawmill grew up at the site, and a post office was opened there in 1895.

In 1906, after the Texas State Railroad was constructed from Rusk to Palestine, the Java post office was closed. Within a short time most of the merchants and residents had moved to the newly founded town of Maydelle, on the railroad.

Java celebrated it�s centennial as a ghost town in 2010.

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