Wilhite Land Surveying Company Mural - Valley View, TX
N 33° 29.284 W 097° 09.900
14S E 670479 N 3706902
A mural depicting a surveying scene is on the side of the Wilhite Land Surveying Company building at 314 W O'Buch, Valley View, TX.
Waymark Code: WMRADT
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 05/31/2016
Views: 3
The mural is predominantly in black, white, and shades of gray, with a black frame, although the bluebonnets are the color that they should be. Perhaps the idea is to evoke an image from an old photograph. The focal point is a group of five men, standing on the open prairie, with their surveying tools. It's a cloudy day, with a bird -- a hawk? -- in the sky, and a wagon with two horses is in the background. Note "Wilhite Land Surveying Co. Valley View Texas" on the wagon: This is a little fanciful, as the company itself was founded in the late 20th century!
The Handbook of Texas Online provides some background about Valley View:
Valley View is on Spring Creek at the intersection of Interstate Highway 35, Farm Road 922, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway ten miles south of Gainesville in southern Cooke County. The site of the community was first settled in 1870 by the Lee family. L. W. Lee plotted a town on his land in 1872, naming it Valley View, presumably for the view offered at the site of Spring Creek valley. Eighteen families moved in, and a post office opened in the community that same year. A blacksmith shop was opened in 1873, and the shop was used for the community's first school. By 1884 the town had an estimated 250 inhabitants, three steam gristmills and cotton gins, and three general stores and shipped cotton, livestock, and wheat. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway reached the town in 1886. Valley View had four churches and a hotel by 1890, and the Valley View school district was incorporated in 1902. In 1903 the town witnessed dramatic growth with the completion of a two-story brick school house and six brick business buildings, the arrival of telephone service, and the opening of a bank. The following year the Valley View News began publishing weekly. The community had an estimated population of 600 by 1914. Two fires struck the town in 1924. In the fall the east side of the town square was burned down. On the morning of December 19 bank robbers started a second fire as they robbed the First National Bank of $5,000. A further two city blocks were destroyed. Valley View's population was estimated at 700 from the 1920s through the mid-1960s. In 1970 it was 805, but the town declined during the next decade. When Valley View incorporated in 1980, it had 514 inhabitants and six businesses. The town began to grow again in the 1980s and had a population of 640 in 1990. In 2000 the population was 737.