Hutchins, Texas

Settlers had been gathering along the west bank of the Trinity River near here since the eighteen sixties, crossing at Dowd's Ferry from the east. When the Houston and Texas Central Railway was completed through the area in eighteen seventy-two, a formal town took shape around the new station. It was named for William J. Hutchins, one of the promoters who helped finance and build the railroad.

By eighteen eighty-four Hutchins had two hundred fifty residents, three general stores, three cotton gins, two gristmills, a sawmill, three doctors, and a wagonmaker. It was a compact, self-sufficient agricultural community at the southern edge of Dallas. Today Hutchins sits at the southern city limit of Dallas along Interstate Forty-Five, hemmed in by warehouses and freight distribution centers. The cotton gins are gone, but the town's name still belongs to the railroad man who made it possible.