Belzora

Belzora was at a ferry crossing where Farm Road 14 now crosses the Sabine River in extreme northern Smith County. The site, originally part of the Juan Santos Coy survey, was settled in 1850 and named for Belle Ham of Tyler. On May 12, 1852, though only a ferry station, Belzora was granted a post office, with Radford Berry as postmaster. Berry had also owned the ferry for at least two years. In 1850 the county commissioners' court had allowed him to charge 2½ cents for ferrying sheep and hogs, five cents for a person or loose cattle and horses, ten cents for a person on horseback, and forty cents for a two-horse wagon. Because it was situated on the heavily traveled Dallas-Shreveport road, the town also included a combination stagecoach stop and store, owned by Thomas R. Swann.

Though the post office was discontinued in 1856, Belzora seemed ripe for development. In 1861 Swann and F. M. Bell bought all the land in the area and laid out town lots, but none was ever sold. Bell later sold his property to Swann. Efforts to open the port to major navigation also failed. The steamer Ben Henry made an unsuccessful attempt to journey downriver with local cotton and freight, and light steamers could maneuver upstream only six months of the year. Even the Patent, a flat-bottomed boat, was stranded at Belzora for ten days because of low water. Such navigational difficulties led natives to refer to the crossing humorously as the "Head of Navigation on the Sabine River."