Founding year: the first Gilmer post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Gilmer’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Gilmer is more historic than 75% of U.S. towns, #43 of 642 in Texas. All 3 inputs are above most U.S. towns; its age ranks highest and its share of homes from before 1940 lowest.
B+
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Gilmer’s overall grade.
Few Texas towns list much on the Register (a typical Texas town has 0.0 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Gilmer’s 2.0 sits above most of its state (75% of Texas towns have fewer) while its 1 listings outnumber those of 51% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from B+ to A−. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±5.8 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Gilmer’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
1885Sheet 1 of 1
Edition
Sheets
BrickWoodStone
Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Gilmer, 1847 to 1960
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founded in 1846, the city's namesake is former Secretary of the Navy Thomas Walker Gilmer. Gilmer is located on the Old Cherokee Trace, a trail used by the Cherokee Indians in their travels. To this day, arrowheads and other Native American artifacts can be found with little to no digging. Sam Houston, when he lived with the Cherokee, traveled the trace through here. The location of Gilmer was determined by a flood on Little Cypress Creek. First located near the creek, residents decided to change locations because of frequent floods.
In 1919, Chilton Jennings, a 28-year-old African American man, was lynched in Gilmer’s town square by a mob of about 1,000 White residents.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
The Gilmer post office opened in 1847, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Gilmer rank for history?
Gilmer is more historic than 75% of U.S. towns, #43 of 642 in Texas. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
What is on the National Register in Gilmer?
One place: the Upshur County Courthouse (listed 2012).
How old are the homes in Gilmer?
13% of Gilmer’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±5.8 points), against a typical 1.6% for a Texas town; the median home was built in 1975.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (3), Wikidata (1), the National Register of Historic Places (1), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
2011
2011
