On March 11, 1848, Ebenezer Allen, former Republic of Texas Attorney General, obtained a charter for the Galveston and Red River Railway. Track construction began in early 1856, and the company was renamed Houston & Texas Central (H&TC) Railway Company in September of that same year. Construction on the line began in Houston and reached Corsicana in 1871, Dallas in 1872, and Denison in 1873, where it connected with the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad to create the first all-rail route from Texas to St. Louis and the east, allowing grain, cotton, and cattle to reach destination markets overnight. In 1874, the H&TC Railway acquired land from J.W. Franklin in Collin County to build a stone dam across Cottonwood Creek and a water station that supplied steam locomotives. The station included a pump house, an elevated water storage tank, a privy for railroad workers who operated the station, and other facilities, and its workers were Americans and immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland. In 1876, H&TC Railway Company surveyor Theodore Kosse created the town of Allen by platting the James Reed survey. The station and town became a center of commerce for local farmers and provided better equipment and broader markets for agricultural production. The Allen Water Station remained in operation until diesel engines replaced steam engines in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its 1874 stone dam and the foundations of the water tower and pump house remain visible as evidence of the H&TC Railroad's important role in late 19th-century commerce, transportation, and settlement.