# Texarkana's 1908 Fourth of July: One City, Two States, and a Brand-New Flag > An 118-year-old pamphlet from Texarkana's Board of Trade captures a Fourth of July celebration on the first morning the 46-star American flag flew — in a city built on two states and one state line. **By:** Marcus Bellamy Shaw **Published:** May 31, 2026 **Tags:** Fourth of July, Northeast Texas, rare historical photos of Texas, Scott Joplin, State Line Avenue, Texarkana --- The pamphlet is 118 years old. Its corners are worn thin, pages held together by a cord laced through punched holes along the left side. The DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University has kept it safe in their Texas digital archives — and even in its aged state, the cover makes a clean statement: "Texarkana / 4th of July Celebration / 1908 / Compliments Board of Trade," centered around a color-printed American flag, gold trim and all. What the Texarkana Board of Trade probably didn't note on that cover: the Fourth of July 1908 was the first morning the United States flew 46 stars. Oklahoma had joined the Union on November 16, 1907. Per long-standing congressional custom, new stars were added to the flag on the following Fourth of July. That made July 4, 1908, the 46-star flag's inaugural day — the outgoing 45-star design retired at midnight. Whether the pamphlet's illustrator had the new count right or was working from the old design is one of those details the archive doesn't resolve. The timing is the story regardless. A city accustomed to being two things at once was celebrating the country on the first morning it had quietly updated its own count. ## Built at the Junction Texarkana's existence is a railroad accident that became a permanent address. The Cairo & Fulton Railroad had been pushing tracks across Arkansas since the late 1850s, and on December 8, 1873, it met the Texas & Pacific at the Arkansas-Texas state line. Two railroad companies divided the land: the Texas & Pacific platted the Texas side, Cairo & Fulton the Arkansas side. State Line Avenue — the main street, the literal boundary — was laid out exactly along the dividing line between the two states. Two cities. One downtown. The name combines three: Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana — though Louisiana sits roughly 30 miles to the southeast. Texarkana, Texas, incorporated in 1873 alongside the railroad junction. Texarkana, Arkansas, didn't follow until 1880. They shared a single post office on the Arkansas side for years; Texas residents eventually secured their own, though the naming convention bounced between the two states before Congressman John Morris Sheppard secured a postal order officially designating it Texarkana, Arkansas-Texas — one of the more unusual official place names in the U.S. postal system. By the turn of the century, the community had a waterworks, five miles of streetcar lines, gas works, an electric light plant, an ice factory, a cotton compress, and a population of roughly 14,000. Then in 1907 — the same year Oklahoma's statehood set the stage for that new flag — Texarkana, Texas, was accorded city status under a new charter. The 1908 Fourth of July was also, quietly, a first-anniversary party for the Texas side's formal civic identity. ## What the Board of Trade Wanted You to Know 🏛️ Boards of Trade in 1908 were civic booster operations — forerunners of the chamber of commerce — and this pamphlet was the era's version of a marketing campaign. According to the DeGolyer Library's catalog record, it included portraits of prominent local figures, photographs of public buildings, a roster of businesses and manufacturers, a list of public services, and a section on planned improvements the Board wanted investors and newcomers to notice. Texarkana was pitching itself. The railroad hub with the split personality wanted to be taken seriously. The pamphlet carries the Typographical Union label — it was printed by union labor, a signal that carried real weight in 1908, when the American labor movement was pushing for recognition in cities and towns across the South and Midwest. Someone at the Board of Trade signed off on a union print shop. ## The Sound of the City 🎵 In 1908, the most famous person to come out of Texarkana wasn't at the Fourth of July celebration. Scott Joplin was in New York City — publishing "Pine Apple Rag" and his instructional manual "The School of Ragtime," working toward the opera "Treemonisha," which is set in the plantation country northeast of Texarkana, the landscape of his own childhood. The Joplin family had moved to Texarkana in the 1870s, and the city shaped what he became. He grew up absorbing the music of Texarkana's saloons, and it was a German-born music teacher named Julius Weiss who recognized his talent and gave him classical training — the foundation that lifted his ragtime beyond the saloon and onto the printed page. "Maple Leaf Rag" had already launched ragtime as a national craze. The Texas Historical Commission marker placed in Texarkana in 1976 calls him "often called the 'King of Ragtime Music.'" None of that was on the Board of Trade's pamphlet. The portraits inside were likely of bankers and merchants. But both stories are Texarkana in 1908 — the civic ambition printed on card stock, and the musical genius who carried a border-town education all the way into American music history. ## The City That's Always In Between Texarkana hasn't stopped being geographically unusual since the railroads invented it. The post office at 500 North State Line Avenue straddles both states — the building completed in 1933, sitting right on the boundary line, is sometimes cited as the second-most photographed post office in the country. Two area codes. Two mayors. One downtown. Standing on State Line Avenue with one foot in Texas and one in Arkansas, you're in a place that has never had the luxury of being simply one thing. That was true in 1873, and it was still true on July 4, 1908, when a city named after three states gathered to mark the country's birthday on the first morning the American flag got a new star. Have you ever visited Texarkana and stood on the state line? What's the strangest part about being in a city that splits right down the middle of its own main street? Sources: DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University — Texarkana 4th of July Celebration, 1908 (digitalcollections.smu.edu). Texas State Historical Association Handbook of Texas: "Texarkana, TX" and "Scott Joplin." Texas Historical Commission marker, Bowie County, Texas, 1976. --- **About the author:** Marcus Bellamy left Michigan in 2024 with his wife Jesi, drove south, and kept driving until the air smelled like the Gulf. They landed in Galveston and decided that was that. He writes about Texas history, culture, and the communities that make this state unlike anywhere else — a perspective sharpened by being someone who chose Texas deliberately, not by accident of birth. His interests run from Gulf Coast fishing and boating to technology, science fiction, and the kind of deep-cut local history most people scroll past. Every Bit Texas is his attempt to make sure those stories don't disappear. --- _Read the full article at [everybittexas.com/posts/texarkana-1908-fourth-of-july](https://everybittexas.com/posts/texarkana-1908-fourth-of-july)_ [← All Posts](https://everybittexas.com/posts/index.md)