the final scheduled run.7 Many local folks bought tickets for short rides to Panola and Minonk where friends met them in cars and brought them back to El Paso. The writer and Judge Horace H. Baker made that "sentimental journey," buying tickets in the little baggage room north of Front Street from the site of the Campbell House, then torn down. Agent Joe Jerew, now dispatcher at Clinton for the Illinois Central, felt so bad about the whole thing that T. P. & W. Agent William Burroughs came over to console him and help him sell the most tickets he had sold in a month.
The final lessee of the old Campbell House was H. S. Kirby who opened another restaurant and a separate shop for shoe repairing. He finally vacated and the building deteriorated rapidly until it came down under the hammers of a wrecking crew in 1938. It was the one building in the center of things that had survived three bad El Paso fires.
A new passenger depot was out of the question in 1938. The long heavy freights are all that pass the site today. It is a traffic as heavy as it ever was and it is controlled locally from the freight offices of agents William Burroughs and Tom Meziere in the opposite quadrangle from the old hotel site.
On November 1, 1939, Judge Horace H. Baker dedicated the present plaque which marks the spot the old landmark once occupied. It was erected by the El Paso Post No. 59 of the American Legion and was unveiled by Isis Campbell McKinney, daughter of the founder. The bronze marker reads in part:
On this site from 1863 to 1938 stood the Campbell House, famous old hostelry and railroad depot built by George H. Campbell in 1863 and operated almost continuously by him and his son Harry Campbell until 1917. ….. General U. S. Grant held a reception here on Monday, April 19, 1880, and General John A. Logan spoke nearby on October 6, 1872.8 Many other notables had been guests at other times. …..
REFERENCES AND NOTES
3. This was one of Judge Baker's many stories and was told personally to the writer. Baker was a wonderful story teller.
4. The writer got his given name indirectly from the Cassell family.
5. Old Commercial Club records, (the writer was one-time secretary,) and the
G. R. Curtiss file in possession of C. F. Curtiss, contain much of this information.
6. Letter from John E. Lundholm, October 10, 1950, then attorney and historian for the T. P. & W. Railroad Company.
7. Letter from Joseph Jerew, Illinois Central dispatcher at Clinton and former El Paso agent, dated September 21, 1951.
8. General Logan delivered a political speech that day in the wigwam which
stood where the V. F. W. building is now located.
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