A Crossing of the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway and the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway
Allenhurst is on Caney Creek six miles northeast of Bay City in northeast Matagorda County. It was named after Allentown, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of Jeff N. Miller, an official of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway (SLB&M), which built through the area in 1905. Allenhurst became a stop for Missouri Pacific passenger trains from Brownsville to Houston as the rail line became part of the Missouri Pacific system.
When the SLB&M built through Allenhurst, it crossed an existing rail line built two years earlier by the New York, Texas and Mexican Railroad (NYT&M). The NYT&M had been chartered in 1877 to build a line from Rosenberg to Brownsville and was acquired by the Southern Pacific (SP) system in 1885. The NYT&M had constructed a 17-mile branch line from Van Vleck to Hawkinsville in 1903 which the SLB&M crossed when building through Allenhurst.
In 1905, the NYT&M was officially merged into the Galveston,
Harrisburg and San Antonio (GH&SA) railroad owned by SP. In
1929, a cabin interlocker, number 156, was established at the
crossing diamond. Within two years, it was deactivated as the
line from Van Vleck to Hawkinsville was abandoned. This may have
been the shortest lived interlocker in Texas. The SLB&M became a Missouri
Pacific property and the tracks are now part of Union Pacific's system.
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Location Map - Tower 156
Above: The former NYT&M/GH&SA right-of-way is visible as a diagonal path
across the image, partly in use by County Road 119 and
also used for other roads further south. The former SLB&M tracks cross
horizontally and in heavy use by Union Pacific.
