Huntsville, Walker County, Texas

Huntsville, Texas – An Overview

Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas, United States.  The population was 35,078 at the 2000 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area.  Huntsville is located in the East Texas Piney Woods on the Interstate 45 corridor between Houston and Dallas. Huntsville is home to Sam Houston State University, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Huntsville State Park, the HEARTS Veterans Museum of Texas located inside West Hill Mall, and the Texas Prison Museum. It also served as the residence of Sam Houston (the noted Texas general, elected leader, and statesman), who is recognized in Huntsville by the Sam Houston Memorial Museum and also by an enormous statue on Interstate 45.

Huntsville has offices of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which also has offices in Austin. The Huntsville Prison, also known as the "Walls Unit" due to the large, imposing walls surrounding the facility, houses the state's execution chamber. Due to escapes from the prison, the male death row was relocated to the Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas; the female death row is located at the Mountain View Unit near Gatesville, Texas.

Huntsville was founded in 1835 or 1836 by Pleasant and Ephraim Gray as an Indian trading post and was named for Huntsville, Alabama, former home of the Gray family. The city originally lay within the northeast section of Montgomery County, which was organized in 1837. It was designated the seat of Walker County when the county was organized in 1846. Huntsville acquired a post office on June 9, 1837, with Ephraim Gray as the first postmaster. The Grays' trading post was well situated to trade with the Bidai, Alabama, and Coushatta Indians. Relations between these groups and the early settlers around Huntsville appear to have been peaceful. As trade along the Trinity River grew and as colonists arrived to exploit timber and rich alluvial bottomlands, Huntsville became the center of increasing activity. The 1840s and 1850s saw the arrival of a few relatively well-to-do families from the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, along with larger numbers of yeomen. Visitors such as Gustav Dresel, N. Adolphus Sterne (a business associate of Alexander McDonald, who built the first brick building in the community), and William Bollaert recorded their impressions of early Huntsville, as did Melinda Rankin, an early resident. Huntsville was also the home of many prominent early Texans, including Sam Houston.

Play Construction & Equipment Provider in Huntsville, Texas - All Play Inc.

ALL PLAY Incorporated is the exclusive Little Tikes Commercial representative in the Huntsville city area of Walker County, Texas. We provide turn-key park, playground, athletic and recreational constructions, besides also offering playground equipment, park furnishings, park shelters, water parks, shade canopies and much more from a number of good brands. Our playground construction and equipment company conforms to the U.S. safety guidelines for designing, constructing, operating and maintaining safe playgrounds for kids in schools, day care centers, community centers, parks and recreational areas in the city of Huntsville.

Quick Facts about Huntsville, Texas

Geographic Coordinates	30°43′23.98″N 95°33′3.44″W
County	Walker County, Texas
Area	31.2 square miles, of which, 30.9 square miles of it is land and 0.3 square miles of it (1.09%) is water.
Elevation	371 ft
Time Zone	Central Standard Time (6 hours behind GMT)
Climate	Warmest month - August (94.60o F – Avg. Max. Temp)Coldest month - January (35.20o F – Avg. Min. Temp) Annual average precipitation - 56.39”