Mineola, Texas

Everything Mineola is known for

5 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Mineola

Songs About Mineola

Maggie Went Back To Mineola
Jesse Dayton
88%
"TITLE"
Maggie Went Back To Mineola
Texas Headhunters
88%
Mineola Rag
East Texas Serenaders
50%
I’ve Been Everywhere...In Texas
Brian Burns
7%
"Mineola"
Railroadin’ Some
Henry Thomas
2%
"Hello, Terrell, Grand Saline, Silver Lake, Mineola"

Artists From Mineola

K
Kacey Musgraves
country Pop: 75

Rivers & Roads in Song near Mineola

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Mineola.

Sabine River 13 songs Interstate 20 13 songs Kickapoo Creek 4 songs

Musical Heritage

Kacey Musgraves RoadyGoat

Golden, Texas — population not much — put Kacey Musgraves on a stage before the world ever heard her. As a teenager she opened for Ray Wylie Hubbard at a little East Texas venue, which is about as real a country apprenticeship as it gets. Then she went and rewrote the rulebook. "Same Trailer Different Park" won a Grammy. "Golden Hour" won more. Her 2013 single "Follow Your Arrow" was a risky, controversial pick for country radio, and she put it out anyway. She picked up GLAAD's Vanguard Award in 2022. But the name's the tell, isn't it — the record that made her a superstar was called "Golden Hour," and the town that made her is just called Golden. Some things you don't have to spell out.

RoadyGoat → · 6.3 mi away

Miranda Lambert RoadyGoat

Before the platinum, there was a red envelope. Miranda Lambert grew up in Lindale, out in East Texas, and she and her father Rick just drove — town to town, gig to gig, trying to get somebody to hear her. One of those demos, packaged in a red envelope, landed her an opening slot in Dallas for Roger Creager. At nineteen she opened for Willie Nelson at the Gypsy Tea Room, down in Deep Ellum. She took third on the show Nashville Star, then signed with Sony and dropped her debut, Kerosene, in 2005. Six platinum albums later, with Grammys for Platinum and for Wildcard on the shelf — it all traces back to a girl, her dad, and a Texas highway.

RoadyGoat → · 11.2 mi away

History of Mineola

Golden, TX RoadyGoat

Golden, Texas, it’s a small place, no doubt. Drive through, and you might not even realize you’d passed anything more than a wide spot in the road. But what’s grown here, right out of this sandy East Texas soil, has a reputation that stretches much further. You see, Golden is known for its sweet potatoes, and not just any sweet potatoes, but some of the best you'll ever taste. The story goes that early settlers found the land around here just perfect for growing. The sandy loam, with its good drainage, turned out to be ideal for sweet potatoes. They started small, just for their families, but word spread. Soon, farmers were shipping them out by the truckload. Now, generations later, sweet potato farming is still the heart of Golden. It's more than just a crop; it's a way of life. The annual Sweet Potato Festival is a huge deal, with contests, parades, and, of course, all sorts of sweet potato dishes. It's a reminder that sometimes, the sweetest things come from the smallest places.

6.3 mi away

The Accidental Bass Paradise RoadyGoat

Just east of Alba lies a marvel of both engineering and accidental ecology: Lake Fork Reservoir. Construction started in 1975, and the Sabine River Authority closed the dam in February 1980. The purpose was purely practical — municipal and industrial water, with Texas Utilities and the cities of Dallas and Longview signing on to buy it. The engineering was massive, involving a two-and-a-half-mile-long earthen dam holding back some 27,000 acres of water. But the builders made a crucial decision. Instead of clear-cutting the entire reservoir basin, they left most of the timber standing. When the lake filled, these submerged forests of oak, hickory, and pine created the perfect, complex habitat for fish. Texas Parks and Wildlife then implemented a visionary program of Florida-strain largemouth stocking and restrictive harvest rules. The result? An unintentional, world-class bass factory that transformed Alba's economy from oil and agriculture to tourism and recreation.

RoadyGoat → · 9.5 mi away

When Coal Was King RoadyGoat

If you were here around 1911, the air would have been thick with the smell of coal smoke. Lignite - soft, brown, low-grade coal - turned up in the ground near Alba around 1900, lying close enough to the surface that men worked it in strip pits and shallow slopes rather than the deep black shafts of Appalachia. And it mattered enough that somebody built a railroad for it: the Texas Short Line Railway went in during 1902 and 1903 for the specific purpose of hauling coal out of Alba and Hoyt over to Grand Saline. At the peak, around 1911, five area mines were pulling forty thousand tons a month out of this ground. It was hard, dirty, dangerous work, and it was the best job around - Alba's population climbed toward two thousand. Then the fuel changed under them. Cheap petroleum and electricity put Texas lignite into a sharp slide through the 1920s, and by the time the Second World War ended the mining had all but stopped. An entire era, gone in about thirty years.

RoadyGoat → · 9.5 mi away

William Jesse McDonald

1873

(September 28, 1852 - January 15, 1918) Born in Mississippi, "Bill" McDonald moved with his family to Rusk County, Texas, about 1866. During Reconstruction, McDonald was tried for treason after a conflict with Union authorities but was acquitted. He established W. J. McDonald and Co., one of the first mercantile firms in Mineola, by 1873. McDonald became friends with James Stephen Hogg, who introduced him to Rhoda Carter; she and McDonald were married in 1876. By 1877 they were operating McDonald Hall opera house, a prominent local cultural center. When Hogg became county attorney in 1878, he prosecuted McDonald and others for carrying weapons in the increasingly violent streets of Mineola. McDonald later became a deputy sheriff of Wood County, and his reputation for boldness and marksmanship began with his role in bringing order to Mineola. During the 1880s McDonald started cattle ranches in Wichita and Hardeman counties and became a deputy sheriff in Hardeman County. He also was appointed deputy to the U. S. Marshal of the Northern District of Texas. Governor James Hogg made McDonald a captain in the Texas Rangers in 1891. He was an exemplary administrator and investigator for the Texas Rangers until 1907, when Governor Thomas Campbell appointed him state revenue agent. He later served as a bodyguard to President Woodrow Wilson, who in April 1913 appointed him Marshal of the Northern District of Texas, a post he held until his death. Most celebrated for his years as a Texas Ranger, McDonald was considered a fine tracker, an excellent criminal investigator, and an efficient controller of mobs. He died of pneumonia in 1918 and was interred at Quanah. (1999)

Historical Marker →

Hogg, Miss Ima, Birthplace of

1882

Born here on July 10, 1882, Ima Hogg was the only daughter of Sarah Stinson and Gov. James S. Hogg. Ima studied fine arts at the University of Texas in Austin, and in New York and Europe. In 1918 oil was discovered on the Varner-Hogg Plantation near West Columbia which enabled Miss Hogg to devote her life to the arts, historic preservation and philanthropy. She was recognized nationally and received many accolades for her services to the people of Texas. She died August 19, 1975, in London and was buried in Austin. (1997)

Historical Marker →

Hogg, Ima

1913

Ima Hogg, philanthropist and patron of the arts, daughter of Sarah Ann (Stinson) and Governor James Stephen Hogg , was born in Mineola, Texas, on July 10, 1882. She had three brothers, William Clifford Hogg , born in 1875; Michael, born in 1885; and Thomas Elisha Hogg, born in 1887. According to family history, Ima was named for the heroine of a Civil War poem written by her uncle Thomas Elisha. Her name became a part of Texas folklore, along with the myth of a fictitious sister supposedly named Ura. Ima Hogg was affectionately known as Miss Ima for most of her long life. She was eight years old when her father was elected governor; she spent much of her early life in Austin. After her mother died of tuberculosis in 1895, Ima attended the Coronal Institute in San Marcos, and in 1899 she entered the University of Texas. She started playing the piano at age three and in 1901 went to New York to study music. Her father's illness drew her back to Texas in 1905. After his death in 1906 she continued her music studies in Berlin and Vienna from 1907 to 1909. She then moved to Houston, where she gave piano lessons to a select group of pupils and helped found the Houston Symphony Orchestra , which played its first concert in June 1913. Miss Ima served as the first vice president of the Houston Symphony Society and became president in 1917. She became ill in late 1918 and spent the next two years in Philadelphia under the care of a specialist in mental and nervous disorders. She did not return to Houston to live until 1923. In the meantime, oil had been struck on the Hogg property near West Columbia, Texas, and by the late 1920s Miss Ima was involved in a wide range of philanthropic projects. In 1929 she founded the Houston Child Guidance Center, an agency to provide therapy and counseling for disturbed children and their families. In 1940, with a bequest from her brother Will, who had died in 1930, she established the Hogg Foundation for Mental Hygiene, which later became the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at the University of Texas. In 1943 Miss Hogg, a lifelong Democrat, won an election to the Houston school board, where she worked to establish symphony concerts for schoolchildren, to get equal pay for teachers regardless of sex or race, and to set up a painting-to-music program in the public schools. In 1946 she again became president of the Houston Symphony Society, a post she held until 1956, and in 1948 she became the first woman president of the Philosophical Society of Texas . Since the 1920s she had been studying and collecting early American art and antiques, and in 1966 she presented her collection and Bayou Bend, the River Oaks mansion she and her brothers had built in 1927, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. The Bayou Bend Collection, recognized as one of the finest of its kind, draws thousands of visitors each year. In the 1950s Miss Ima restored the Hogg family home at Varner Plantation near West Columbia, and in 1958 she presented it to the state of Texas. It became Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historical Site . In the 1960s she restored the Winedale Inn, a nineteenth-century stagecoach stop at Round Top, Texas, which she gave to the University of Texas. The Winedale Historical Center now serves as a center for the study of Texas history and is also the site of a widely acclaimed annual fine arts festival. Miss Hogg also restored her parents' home at Quitman, Texas, and in 1969 the town of Quitman established the Ima Hogg Museum in her honor. In 1953 Governor Allan Shivers appointed her to the Texas State Historical Survey Committee (later the Texas Historical Commission ), and in 1967 that body gave her an award for "meritorious service in historic preservation." In 1960 she served on a committee appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower for the planning of the National Cultural Center (now Kennedy Center) in Washington, D.C. In 1962, at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy, Ima Hogg served on an advisory panel t

Tsha Handbook →

Rhodes, Andrew Jackson [Jack]

1940

Jack Rhodes, songwriter, sound engineer, and producer, was born Andrew Jackson Rhodes in 1908 in Van Zandt County. Reportedly, he dropped out of school. During World War II , Rhodes worked in the shipyards in Houston. A back injury on the job permanently sidelined him from his work, and Rhodes, almost forty, decided to embark on a career in music. In the late 1940s he organized his own band, Jack Rhodes and His Rhythm Boys (also later known as the Lone Star Buddies), which sometimes included his stepbrother, songwriter and Bob Wills Texas Playboy Leon Payne . Rhodes performed on Louisiana Hayride as well as at clubs throughout Louisiana and East Texas. About 1953 he stopped performing and operated a small motel called the Trail 80 Motor Courts in Mineola, Texas. At some point he divorced his first wife, and in 1955 he married Loretta Williams. They had one son. At his motel, Rhodes built a small studio and focused his efforts on songwriting and recording. He penned, individually and with others, a remarkable list of country and rockabilly songs destined to stand as classics in their respective genres. He wrote (with Joe “Red” Hayes) “A Satisfied Mind” which became a Number 1 hit on the country charts for Porter Wagoner. Red and Betty Foley, Jean Shepard, Roy Drusky, Bob Dylan, and the Byrds also covered the song. Hank Snow recorded his song “Conscience I’m Guilty” as well as “Beautiful Lies.” With Dick Reynolds, he wrote “The Waltz of the Angels,” performed by Wynn Stewart in 1956 and later by George Jones and Margie Singleton. With Reynolds, Rhodes wrote another classic, “Silver Threads and Golden Needles,” which became a hit for the Springfields in 1962. Rhodes signed a deal with publisher Central Songs which gave him access to have his material pitched to Capital Records. Consequently, such country artists as Sonny James, Ferlin Husky, Wanda Jackson, Jean Shepard, and Faron Young recorded his songs. During the mid-to-late 1950s, Rhodes also played a highly significant role in the development of rockabilly and in the writing of some of that genre’s most quintessential songs. Rhodes wrote and/or co-wrote two of rockabilly’s most enduring anthems—“Action Packed” and (with Elroy Dietzel) “Rockin’ Bones.” He recorded budding rockabilly star Johnny Dollar in his Mineola studio and subsequently produced him in Dallas. Though the recordings were not released at the time, eventually rockabilly artist Ronnie Dawson had success with “Rockin’ Bones” and “Action Packed.” Rhodes also wrote and first recorded “Woman Love” at his studio, and the song was eventually covered by early rocker and Capitol artist Gene Vincent. Subsequently, Vincent recorded more of Rhodes’s songs. Rhodes established his own record label, National Sounds, and continued to record musicians at his Mineola studio in the 1960s. Some of the recordings were released on other small labels and have since been highly-prized by collectors. Other material was not released. Rhodes died in October 1968. In 1972 he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He also received a BMI award for “Silver Threads and Golden Needles,” which boasted more than one million radio broadcasts. For his groundbreaking and influential songwriting and promotion in rockabilly, he was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 2009. The Mineola Historical Museum also had an exhibit on Rhodes. Thirty of his studio recordings, many of them unreleased, can be heard on the compilation, Gene Vincent Cut Our Songs: Primitive Texas Rockabilly & Honky Tonk .

Tsha Handbook →

Site of Public Mineral Water Well

1885

Mineola settlers chose this area, nicknamed "the Forks of the River," for its abundance of water. The town's first water service was administered by A. W. Front, who made daily deliveries to his 50 clients. A water well was located on this site as early as 1885; workmen drilling for salt between 1889 and 1890 discovered mineral water. In 1896 a 60-foot windmill tower with a 3,000-gallon cypress wood tank was constructed and a mineral well dug to 150 feet by Henry L. Beaird. This became the town's main water source. A 1913 analysis of the water revealed more than 12 minerals associated with healing properties. In 1906, an electric motor replaced the windmill. The well was capped in 1924 when the street was bricked over. The exact site of the public mineral water well was the center of the intersection of Highway 80 and Johnson Street. (1998)

Historical Marker →

Giles, Barney McKinney

1917

Barney McKinney Giles, chief of the Air Staff and deputy commander of the United States Army Air Corps during World War II , was born on September 13, 1892, on a farm near Mineola, Texas, to Richard Portlock and Louisa (Read) Giles. He and his identical twin, Benjamin F. Giles , attended East Texas State Teachers College to obtain teachers' certificates. For the next three years they taught in Ochiltree and Gray counties and then decided to go the University of Texas to study law. In 1917 Giles enlisted as a flying cadet and took basic training at the University of Texas, at Mitchel Field, New York, and at Ellington Field , Houston. In September 1918 he was sent to Issoudun, France, and later was assigned to the 168th Observation Squadron. He returned to the United States in September 1919 and became an engineer officer at the Aviation Supply Depot at Morrison, Virginia. During the next ten years he served as an engineer in the aviation-repair depots in Dallas and San Antonio, as a flight engineer at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, and as a flightinstructor and engineer at March Field, Riverside, California. By 1930 he was the chief engineer officer at Rockwell Air Depot, San Diego, California, and was promoted to captain. With Ben he got an appointment to the Air Corps Tactical School, Maxwell Field, Alabama. In 1935 he was assigned to command the Twentieth Bombardment Squadron at Langley Field, Virginia. In 1936 he became operations officer of the Second Bombardment Group at Langley Field. That same year he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for leading the rescue of seven men stranded on an ice floe near Cape Cod Bay. In 1938 Giles graduated from the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth, Kansas, and then was assigned as chief of the Inspection Division in Washington, D.C., where he was instrumental in organizing the army air force safety program, which meant overseeing the records of all pilots and the maintenance of all aircraft. In 1939 he was promoted to major and in December 1941, with the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel, was ordered to California to take over the Air Service Area Command. He became brigadier general in charge of the Fourth Bomber Command in February 1942 and took over the Fourth Air Force in September of that year with the temporary rank of major general. In July 1943 Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold appointed Giles chief of the Air Staff and later promoted him to be deputy commanding general of the air force. During this time General Giles was active in promoting the development of the long-range fighter planes, the P-38s, the P-47s, and the P-51s, that profoundly affected the course of the war in Europe. General Giles often served as acting head of the army air force because of General Arnold's prolonged illness. In the spring of 1945 Giles went to the Pacific battle zone as the deputy commander of the Twentieth Air Force. He helped direct the B-29 raids on Japan and formulate plans for dropping the atomic bomb. After the surrender of Japan he attended the signing of the treaty, on the battleship Missouri . He retired on July 1, 1946, after twenty-nine years of service as a command pilot, and took a position as first vice president of Air Associates in New York, a position he held for three years. For the next ten years he worked with the Lear Jet Corporation, where he helped to perfect the automatic pilot and other instruments. Giles married Hollyce Thomas, daughter of John Covington Thomas, in San Antonio on April 18, 1922. She died in 1968, and in 1969 he married Laura Edwards. After her death, he married Katherine Elizabeth Gregg, on October 11, 1975. General Giles died on May 6, 1984, in San Antonio and was buried with full military honors at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. In his early years he was a member of the Christian Church and later a Methodist. His honors included the degree of doctor of aeronautical science from the Pennsylvania Military College, the Distinguished Servi

Tsha Handbook →

Things to Do in Mineola

food 11.0 mi away
LaCascio's Scratch Italian

Italian fine dining in tiny Lindale at 75 Miranda Lambert Way — named for the town's famous daughter. Scratch kitchen, fresh-baked bread, upscale-casual…

Sports in Mineola

🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 3A · Football · 2016

Mineola Yellow Jackets — 2016 UIL 3A Division 1 Football State Champions

Most recent: 35-14 over Yoakum · 2016 3A Division 1 final

Mineola High School, a Class 3A football powerhouse in East Texas, has a proud history of gridiron success. The Yellowjackets have consistently showcased their talent and dedication on the field, bringing significant recognition to their community. Their program is a source of immense local pride, reflecting the hard work and spirit of Mineola.

The school has also seen its athletes advance to higher levels of competition. Among its notable alumni is Dawson Pendergrass, who continued his football career at the major college level. This tradition of developing strong players underscores Mineola's commitment to athletic excellence.

State titles
2016
Most recent
2016, 35-14
Class
3A
Key Players
  • Dawson Pendergrass — (Class of 2023), college football running back for the Baylor Bears
The moment

Mineola secured a state championship in 2016, defeating Yoakum 35-14 in the 3A Division 1 UIL State Championship.

Sources: Wikipedia · UIL State Championship Archives · SI High School (ScoreBook Live)

Everything Near Mineola

213 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Mineola on the Map
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