Cox's Switch

Splendora is at the junction of U.S. Highway 59 and Farm Road 2090, on the Southern Pacific Railroad six miles north of New Caney and twenty-two miles from Conroe in eastern Montgomery County. In the late 1800s it was known as Cox's Switch, in honor of Charles Cox, who was instrumental in getting the Houston, East and West Texas Railway to extend a narrow-gauge spur there. The name was changed to Splendora in 1896, when Cox asked the first postmaster, Milton Z. King, to rename the town. He chose Splendora because of the "Splendor of its floral environment." The town grew slowly. By 1925 the population was 100, in 1949 it was 180, and in the early 1970s it peaked at 1,000. In 1895 the Greenleaf Church building was used as a schoolhouse. In 1913 a new two-room school had fifty students. The enrollment was sixty-five in 1925 and 170 in 1932–33. On October 27, 1936, the school was partially burned. The following year a new brick building was completed; in 1981 it was being used for a junior high school. Splendora became an independent school district in the 1940s. Since then it has added a new high school (1959), a new elementary school (1966), and a new junior high school (1978). Splendora was incorporated in December 1966. In 1989 the town had a population of 722, three churches, two cemeteries, and thirty-seven businesses. In 1990 the population was 745. The population grew to 1,275 in 2000.