Belzora, Texas   8-19-06

Belzora was at a ferry crossing where FM 14 now crosses the Sabine River in extreme northern Smith County.

The site, originally part of the Juan Santos Coy survey, was settled in 1850 and named for Belle Ham of Tyler.

On May 12th, 1852, though only a ferry station, Belzora was granted a post office, with Radford Berry as postmaster. Berry had also owned the ferry for at least two years.

In 1850 the county commissioners’ court had allowed berry to charge two and one-half cents for ferrying sheep and hogs, five cents for a person or loose cattle and horses, ten cents for a person one horseback and forty cents for the two-horse wagon.

Because it was situated on the heavily traveled Dallas-Shreveport road, the town also included a combination stage coach stop and store, owned by Thomas R. Swann.

Though the post office was discontinued in 1856, Belzora seemed ripe for development.   In 1861 Swann and F.M. Bell bought all the land in the area and laid out town lots, but none were ever sold.

Bell later sold his property to Swann.

Efforts to open the port to major navigation also failed.

The steamer Ben Henry made an unsuccessful attempt to journey downriver with local cotton and freight.

Light steamers could maneuver upstream only six months of the year.

Even the Patent, a flat-bottomed boat, was stranded at Belzora for 10 days because of low water.

Such difficulties led natives to refer to the crossing humorously as the “head of navigation on the Sabine River.”

During the Civil War a carding plant was located nearby, and according to local lore, a Confederate commissary operated in Belzora.

In the 1870s, the Galveston News listed Belzora as a port, and area farmers often used flatboats and canoes to transport goods downstream from Belzora when the river was high.

Business ambitions proved futile, however, and Belzora began to decline with the construction of the International-Great Northern Railroad in the region.

The settlement appeared on county maps as late as 1903, but by 1936, it had disappeared from county records.

Over the subsequent years a few houses, a church, and even an occasional business were located in the area.

In 2004, nothing remained of Belzora and its ambitious beginnings except a historical marker.