Conroe

Conroe, the county seat of Montgomery County, is on Interstate Highway 45 at the junction of the Union Pacific and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroads, seven miles southeast of Lake Conroe in central Montgomery County. In 1881 Houston lumberman Isaac Conroe established a sawmill on Stewarts Creek two miles east of the International-Great Northern Railroad's Houston-Crockett line on a tract of land in the J. G. Smith survey, first settled in the late 1830s. A small tram line connected the mill to the I-GN track, but Conroe soon transferred his operations down the tracks to the rail junction, where his new mill became a station on the I-GN. In January 1884 a post office was established at the mill commissary, and, at the suggestion of railroad official H. M. Hoxey, the community took the name Conroe's Switch, in honor of the Northern-born, former Union cavalry officer who founded it and served as its first postmaster; within a decade the name was shortened to Conroe.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.