Preston, Lancashire after 1948, Preston became home to a significant number of Asian and Caribbean Commonwealth immigrants, who mostly worked in the manufacturing industry. However, an economic decline hit the town once again in the 1970s, capped by the closure of the Courtaulds factory in 1979 (nearly 3,000 job losses) and the decline of the docks on the River Ribble, which finally closed in 1981. Mass unemployment was firmly back in Preston by the early 1980s, although it was now very much a national crisis due to the recession of that time. The rehousing of families from town centre slums to new
Preston, Texas around the trading post established by Coffee and Colville. The Trading Post of Holland Coffee site received a historic marker in 1936. Preston developed at the junction between the Indian Territory's Texas Road, leading north to Missouri, and what became the Preston Road, leading south farther into Texas. Roughly following a much older trail used by Native Americans for centuries, in 1840-1841 Colonel William Gordon Cooke created the military road from Coffee's trading house on the Red River to Austin. The Preston Road was originally long, from Preston to the Trinity River at Dallas. The Republic of Texas commissioned Colonel