The cars are coming—now is the time for profitable investments! So said a classified ad placed by F. W. Flato, Agent, for town lots in Flatonia. The ad appeared in the January 6, 1874, edition of the Fayette County Record.
The Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway (GH&SA) had arrived in Schulenburg in December 1873. By then, James Converse, chief engineer for the GH&SA, had already drawn the plat for the next “new” town of Flatonia to be on the line.
In anticipation of the arrival of the first railway cars, land agent and town namesake F. W. Flato was busy promoting sales of commercial and residential sites around what would become a newly established depot. He and his partners, John Cline and John Lattimer, had agreed to share the proceeds of these sales with the GH&SA owner, Col. T. W. Peirce. On his part, Peirce would use the money raised in this way to construct the railway to points further west.
Construction of the railway was proceeding apace on its push toward San Antonio. In February 1874, the company advertised in the Galveston Daily News that it wanted 250 tie makers and 100 teams and wagons at the Flatonia Depot, promising good wages and prompt payment. Perhaps there were not enough such workers to meet the demand, as a couple of months later, the paper announced Col. Peirce had contracted for 700 penitentiary convicts to be employed on the road.
Whatever the workforce's makeup, the track was laid in an amazingly short time in today’s terms.
By April 1874, Flatonia was open for business, and for a few months, it was the terminus of the GH&SA Railway. A revised schedule appeared in the Galveston Morning News when a new town was added at the end of the line. Service to and from Flatonia reportedly began on April 18, 1874, and on that very day, the new timetable was published under the heading of "WESTWARD HO! CHANGE OF TIME. Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway is now open and RUNNING TO FLATONIA, 36 Miles west of Columbus, and 120 miles west of Harrisburg.”
The new service was scheduled to leave Galveston at 6:10 a.m. and arrive in Flatonia at 6:30 p.m. The return trip would depart Flatonia at 5:15 a.m. and arrive in Galveston at 3:00 p.m. There was a more extended stopover in Harrisburg on the outbound service than on the return, allowing time for connections from Houston.
The GH&SA was very active in promoting its new railroad passenger and shipping points and, of course, it was in their interest to make the surrounding countryside sound as attractive as possible for potential sales. A column entitled “Slices of Texas,” Galveston Daily News, July 2, 1874, described the land around Flatonia as “probably as good as can be found in the State—rolling prairie, black and superior to the uplands, plenty of wood adjacent, elegant cool water found at twenty to forty feet beneath the surface, farms and plantations rich in the noonday’s sun—teeming with all the good things that God, in His All-wise Providence, has seen fit to bless Flatonians with." Its prosperity and business opportunities were duly noted. Just these few months after its founding, the article boasted that Flatonia had some sixty buildings, “including seven stores, five barrooms, three hotels, two drug stores, blacksmith shop, two barber shops, tin and saddlery shops, and some five lumber yards.” Five gin mills were in full blast, and a church was soon to be erected. The correspondent suggested that when construction of the GH&SA line was completed as far as Waelder and Harwood (which occurred August 1, 1874), Flatonia would thereafter be a “quiet, snug town if no longer the railroad terminus.”
By the time the Galveston Harrisburg and San Antonio R. R. Immigrants Guide to Western Texas was published in 1876, Flatonia had pretty much lived up to its early expectations as a shipping point for agricultural products. The Guide described it as an infant city containing nine good business houses, having shipped 12,000 head of cattle, 5,000 bales of cotton, and sold over half a million feet of lumber since October. Achieving the “quiet and snug" part took a bit longer!
