AWALT, TEXAS. Awalt, among the earliest settlements in Gregg County, was probably founded in the late 1840s. It was located two miles south of Pine Tree Church near the site of the present western edge of Longview. The community was named for Solomon Awalt, the first minister of the Pine Tree Cumberland Presbyterian Church. A ferry known as Awalt's Ferry operated nearby on the Sabine River during the Civil War era. When the Texas and Pacific Railway was built through Gregg County in 1873 it bypassed the town, and most of the residents apparently moved to the new community of Willow Springs, on the railroad. Awalt had disappeared by 1900.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene W. McWhorter, Traditions of the Land: The History of Gregg County (Longview, Texas: Gregg County Historical Foundation, 1989).
