The area that became Hitchcock was held before the 1820s by Karankawa Indians and afterward by cattle raisers. The Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway was built through the area in the 1870s, and its station was named for Galveston civic leader and late landowner Lent Munson Hitchcock. In the 1880s, George Henckel opened a produce commission house on the railway, and leaders among local fruit and vegetable growers included Emil and Hypolite Perthius, H. M. Stringfellow, and Jacques Tacquard. Stores, a butcher shop, bakery, hotel, and saloons were established, the townsite was platted, and a public school opened in 1894. Churches were active, with St. Mary's Catholic parish, later Our Lady of Lourdes, having the first house of worship, and a building for Protestants, soon a Methodist church, being erected in 1894. After 1920, truck farming declined and packing houses closed. In the 1930s, local men found work in Texas City. A Coast Auxiliary Army Replacement Center opened there in 1940 and later became Camp Wallace, an anti-aircraft training center, while a blimp base operated from 1941 to 1945 for surveillance against enemy submarines. Hitchcock remains a center of small business and industry, with modern homes on garden acreage owned and occupied by urban and industrial workers.