Bloomburg's history is a mystery

"Yea for us!" Kinsey Mangrum, left, and Ally Dixon, who is holding Britllynn Mangrum, might be saying as they have fun around the newly painted outside wall of the historic Bloomburg State Bank building.
"Yea for us!" Kinsey Mangrum, left, and Ally Dixon, who is holding Britllynn Mangrum, might be saying as they have fun around the newly painted outside wall of the historic Bloomburg State Bank building.

Bloomburg is circling around its 125th birthday.

"Circling" may be right because the town's name sign says "established 1890," but the late historian Edwin Simmons Jr. wrote the town's founding date as 1895, the year the Kansas City Southern Railroad bought land and built a station here.

Another historian mentions that the first post office dates back to 1896. A 1901 church bulletin mentions a Blooming Grove community. It seems that Bloomburg's name is also mysterious.

A 1925 newspaper article says Bloomburg was named after a landowner and railroad stockholder named Bloomburg, who sold a large tract of land to the Kansas City Southern Railroad.

Some locals say the town was named after a drummer in 1895 who came through selling goods to stores to "drum up" business and noticed all the flowers in bloom. He became poetic and suggested the name. Perhaps he said, "Be sure to tell everyone I named the town" as he left.

And then the town's most famous yearly event, which attracts thousands, also contributes to the mystery. It is named the Cullen Baker Festival and has a lot to do with the unsavory character of Cullen Baker, which casts a fog over the event.

"Are we honoring this fellow or not?"

Still more, Bloomburg is unique in that while it is in Texas it is but one mile from Arkansas and about six from Louisiana.

With its historic three-storied Bloomburg State Bank of 1918, it has the county's tallest commercial building, now vacant.

The town also has a good-looking and organized school of 12 grades and pre-school.

So it is that different flavors of folk seem to enjoy coming to the town that blooms. The questions and uncertainties seem to make the village colorful, as it is during certain times of the day when the sun is rising or setting and the following photos were taken.

For a birthday party, if someone were to bake a cake with 125 candles and if someone else were to portray Cullen Baker riding into town to celebrate his festival and blow out those candles, that would make Bloomburg bloom a lot brighter in this gray of winter.

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