Boston

Boston, the county seat of Bowie County, is just south of U.S. Highway 82 and the Missouri Pacific Railroad and twenty-two miles west of Texarkana in central Bowie County. In the mid-1880s citizens of Texarkana and eastern Bowie County succeeded in a campaign to mark Texarkana the county seat (see OLD BOSTON, TEXAS). About five years later the citizens of western and central Bowie County were able to get a new election to choose another county seat; they proposed locating the geographic center of the county and building the courthouse there. Their campaign succeeded, and in 1890 construction of a new courthouse began at a site a mile south of New Boston and three miles north of the older city named Boston. Residents applied for a new post office under the name Center, but because a town by that name already existed, the request was denied; the names Hood and Glass were not accepted for the same reason. Because the law required a post office at every county seat, the post office was moved from the original Boston community. The name was transferred also, and the original Boston site became known as Old Boston. The new county seat had a population of 175 by 1896, and its population remained at around that level through the early 1990s. Because of its proximity to the much larger town of New Boston, Boston never developed a substantial commercial base. Through the mid-1980s it had never reported more than five rated businesses; in 1982 it had only two. In 1984, though the city limits of Boston and New Boston touched, the two towns maintained their separate identities and post offices. In 1986 a new Bowie County Courthouse was built in New Boston, but Boston remained the official county seat. The population of Boston was reported at 200 in the early 1990s and remained the same in 2000.