Old Town Spring, born alongside the railroad tracks, has been able to preserve its historic place and serves as a reminder of simpler times. As if in full circle, Spring has once again become a “boom town” of small business establishments catering to the desires of travelers. The turn-of-the-century family cottages and businesses on and around Main Street have found a new purpose, and hence, a new life. Today, the former railroad junction is a quaint commercial area. Clapboard cottages, several rescued from nearby railroad towns such as Westfield (and the Heights in Houston), preserve the legacy of the past for future generations to enjoy. Merchants operate out of Restored Homes
and the former State Bank Building.
The oldest commercial building located on its original site in Spring is the Wunsche Bros. Saloon and Café. The Wunsche Bros. Saloon received recognition as a Texas State Historical Structure in 1984, and also is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In the 1990s, a period train depot (circa 1907) symbolizing one of the two original Victorian train depots that once graced the town, was brought to Old Town Spring from Lovelady in north Texas. Though fire claimed this historic depot, a larger model replica has been constructed on the site and utilized as a popular restaurant. Although trains no longer deliver passengers to Spring, today the Old Town attracts hundreds of visitors each year to its shops and cultural entertainment.
A local museum, the Spring Historical Museum, and town organizations such as the Old Town Spring Preservation League, preserve and promote the history of the town.
The heritage of Old Town Spring is linked to the history of the railroad, and the presence of the railroad continues to be found in Spring. Currently, the Union Pacific operates the earlier I.&G.N. main rail line that runs parallel to the town. Passenger trains no longer stop there, but a large rail yard exists just to the south of it, increasing the rail activity. Constructed early in the 1980s by the Missouri-Pacific, it is reminiscent of the original fourteen-track rail yard constructed in the heart of town in 1901. The impact of the railroad during the Gilded Age transformed Spring from an agricultural to commercial entity, ended the isolation of outlying areas, and created a railroad town that survived the boom and bust cycles that claimed so many other Texas towns, just a whistle stop away from downtown Houston.
From years of prosperity north of downtown Houston as a railroad town, to isolation as a “ghost town,” to re-emergence as a preserved nostalgic village complete with Main Street, Old Town Spring has come full circle in its historical journey. Today it is a quaint historical haven of restored, turn-of-the-century cottages that preserve the heritage of a small Texas town founded during railroad’s Golden Age. Shops of every whim and fancy abound, and often a familiar whistle is heard from a train passing alongside the town. Though passenger trains no longer stop in Spring, the town’s visitors turn to gaze at the calling from the tracks. It is a simple yet poignant reminder that it was the railroad that gave birth to the town. There is more than meets the eye at this former whistle stop.
