New Boston: The County With Three Bostons

Bowie County may be the only county in Texas with three towns named Boston. It started with a settlement named for an early storekeeper, W. J.

Boston, which simply became Boston. When the railroad came through in eighteen seventy-six, it built its depot about four miles north, and that new stop became New Boston. The original Boston then became Old Boston to tell them apart.

A later dispute over the county courthouse location required moving it to a point geographically between the two Bostons, and the Post Office gave that spot its own Boston designation. Today New Boston, with a population of around four thousand six hundred, is the largest of the three. Texarkana, about twenty miles east, is the largest city in the county, but the courthouse stayed out among the Bostons.