City Hall - Rockdale, TX
Posted by: 
WalksfarTX
N 30° 39.185 W 097° 00.377
14R E 691035 N 3392851
A town of around 6,000 people in Milam County. It is located 13 miles south of Cameron, the count seat.
Waymark Code: WM16B2K
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 06/18/2022
Views: 1
White brick building on the south side of town. The front of the building is one story with a two story section behind it. In front is a large sign "Welcome to Rockdale".
Texas Escapes
"In 1873 as the International-Great Northern Railroad was laying track between Hearne and Austin, local businessmen sold 400 acres of land to the railroad to plat a townsite. The town lots were auctioned in the fall of 1873 and the railroad arrived in early 1874. The honor of naming the new town fell to Mrs. B. F. Ackerman who named it after a specific boulder said to be 20 feet in circumference and nearly 12 feet high.
The arrival of the railroad made Rockdale Milam County’s first major railroad connection. The population swelled to 1,700 by the mid 1880s.
Lignite coal was extracted from several area mines in the 1890s and in 1891 the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway became the town’s second railroad. Coal mining became more important to the economy with an estimated 7,000 ore cars leaving Rockdale weekly.
With the discovery of a (shallow) oilfield in 1920, lignite mining declined and a refinery was built. After WWII the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) opened a plant here – occupying most of what was the town of Sandow, Texas."