The Houston and Texas Central Railroad was the first railroad to operate in Houston. On January 1, 1853 ground was broken for the Galveston and Red River Railway. Crews began laying track in early 1856, and the rails reached Cypress City, the twenty-five-mile point, on July 26, 1856. Soon afterward the name of company was changed to Houston and Texas Central Railway. The original route, some of which is still in use, proceeded westward from the west bank of Buffalo Bayou, passing just south of the cache location and eventually angling northwest along what is now the Hempstead highway before curving northward to Cypress.
Construction of the H&TC line was interrupted by the Civil War but the tracks finally reached Dallas in 1872. The following year the track laying reached the Red River where the line was connected to the Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad. This provided an all rail connection extending from Houston to Saint Louis and points beyond.
The cache is located near the western boundary of the historical site of H&TC railcar shops and rail yard, which extended from the cache location eastward to Silver Street. The line’s depot was constructed at the present site of the downtown postal facility which is approximately a mile east of here. The nearby tracks running along the original H&TC route eventually became part of the Southern Pacific Railway system. Today those tracks are part of the Union Pacific station loop that serves the Houston Amtrak station.