Our Community
Originally part of the town of Liberty, which was established in 1831 during the time of Mexican rule, the area that is now Dayton was divided from the rest of Liberty by the Trinity River, with Liberty located on its east bank and West Liberty, as Dayton was then called, on a hill several miles west of the river. A road and a ferry directly connected the two parts of the town.
Early settlers of West Liberty bought land grants from the Mexican government. One such settler was Isaiah Cates Day, who came to West Liberty in 1830 at the age of 18. In 1839, he acquired additional land from the newly formed Republic of Texas.
Sometime after the death of his first wife, he married Martha Caroline Munson-Pruett-Orr. Martha's family, the Munsons, were well established with ties to other prominent families. Being a member of that family afforded Isaiah the opportunity to become a businessman and rancher. In 1858, as the Texas-New Orleans Railroad was being built through West Liberty, Day provided labor to the project. West Liberty became a flag-stop for the railroad when it was completed in 1860. Conductors of the train began referring to the stop as Days Station, Days Town, or Dayton Station. About 1877, the name was also applied to the local post office and by 1885, Dayton had become the official name of the town.
Dayton began to prosper around the turn of the century with the founding of several sawmills. New families arrived by train, responding to newspaper ads placed by a land developer advertising fertile farmland. After a drainage system was established, rice became the major crop farmed in the area.
By 1902, Dayton had four general stores, two drug stores, one livery stable, a blacksmith shop, post office, depot, two churches, and a schoolhouse. An election was held on July 20, 1907, to incorporate the Dayton Independent School District. In 1911, Dayton citizens voted to incorporate the town. For reasons unknown another city election was held on November 28, 1925, to reincorporate the town, with Judge W.S. Neel elected mayor.
Texas governor Marion Price Daniel, Sr., was born in Dayton on October 10, 1910; his brother Bill Daniel, governor of the United States Territory of Guam from 1961 through 1963, was born in Dayton on November 20, 1915. The Daniel brothers were grandsons of General Sam Houston who had led victory for the Republic of Texas independence in 1836. By 1910, the town had a bank, two cotton gins, a weekly newspaper, and 2,500 inhabitants. Dayton was recorded as an incorporated municipality on May 3, 1911. The mayor was W. M. Babcock, and aldermen were W. T. Jamison, J. H. Marshall, J. A. Coleman, and J. D. Spear. Town records indicate that the community was reincorporated in 1925. Oil development during the 1920s brought new industries.
By 1940 Dayton reported 1,207 residents and seventy businesses and was listed as a railroad center. The population increased steadily from 3,367 in 1965 to 6,201 in 1988. In 1989 the largest school population in the county made the Dayton Independent School District the major employer in the city. At that time Dayton operated under a mayor-council form of city government.
The major route passing through Dayton is U.S. Highway 90, traveling west towards Crosby and Houston and east into East Texas to Beaumont and onward to Louisiana. SH 321 connects Dayton to Cleveland. Within the city of Dayton, SH 321 is referred to as North Cleveland Street, passing through residential Dayton as a four-lane urban highway, before narrowing back down to a two-lane rural State Highway going north to Cleveland. SH 146 provides Dayton with a connection to Baytown, and FM 1960 connects Dayton to the northern reaches of Houston as well as Humble and Huffman.
Dayton is the meeting point of two rail lines. One is a north/south Union Pacific (UP) line that comes out of Baytown called the UP Baytown Subdivision. The other is the east/west UP Lafayette Subdivision line that roughly follows US 90. The BNSF has authority to operate its trains on the Baytown Subdivision from Dayton to just west of Baytown and has a rail yard just south of Dayton. Another rail line runs through the northern edge of the city, called the UP Beaumont Subdivision. A study is being performed by the Texas Department of Transportation regarding a Dayton-to-Cleveland single mainline rail corridor consisting of approximately 40 miles of track connecting the UP Lufkin Subdivision and the BNSF Conroe Subdivision near Cleveland to the UPRR Baytown Subdivision south of Dayton.
