LADD, TEXAS. Ladd was on the Trinity Valley and Northern Railway forty miles northeast of Houston in western Liberty County. It was named after E. P. Ladd, one of the railroad company's incorporators. Ladd was near the site of the Dayton Lumber Company, which had built the line to secure better access to its extensive timber holdings north of Dayton. The Ladd commissary, established by the lumber company to serve its workers, was sold to outside businessmen in 1910 in return for their guarantee that it would remain open. The decline of the lumber industry in western and northwestern Liberty County, the demise of the Trinity Valley and Northern in 1933, and the growth of nearby Dayton signaled the end for the station at Ladd.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: S. G. Reed, A History of the Texas Railroads (Houston: St. Clair, 1941; rpt., New York: Arno, 1981).
