City of Aledo
Aledo, Parker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1849, the U. S. Army built Fort Worth to establish a line of defense against Indian raids and also to protect Indian lands from settlement. By 1855, farms, ranches and small settlements dotted eastern Parker County and the frontier encroached into hunting lands inhabited for years by Comanche and Kiowa tribes. By 1856, sufficient settlement had taken place and Parker County was created. When the Texas and Pacific Railroad laid tracks in 1879, the community of Aledo was established. At first, the community was known as Parker Station, but was changed in 1882 to Aledo, named after Aledo, Illinois, the hometown of a railroad official. By the beginning of the 20th century, Aledo was the commercial center of east Parker County with business development near the train station and along north and south front streets. There were two water-powered mills in operation near Aledo. The transcontinental Bankhead Highway bypassed downtown Aledo in the 1920s, but the route currently establishes the northern boundary of the future city limits of the City of Aledo. By 1960, Aledo was growing because engineers and professionals from the bomber plant in Fort Worth wanted to live in a small community. On May 8, 1963, Aledo was incorporated as a city with 550 residents. The initial city government in 1963 consisted of Mayor Robert Daugherty and commissioners Felix Reynolds and Joe Whitmire. Citizens Jack Holt and Dub Bearden were also principal promoters to have Aledo recognized as a city. Since then, Aledo has continued to grow and prosper as reflected in its slogan, “Rich Heritage, Dynamic Future.”
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The country around Aledo passed from Comanche and Kiowa hunting grounds to farms and ranches after the U.S. Army built Fort Worth in 1849 and Parker County was organized in 1856. The town itself was born when the Texas and Pacific Railroad laid track in 1879, first called Parker Station and renamed in 1882 for a railroad official's Illinois hometown. Long a farm-and-mill trading center, it grew again in the mid-20th century as workers from Fort Worth's bomber plant sought small-town living, and it incorporated as a city in 1963.
Why it matters
Aledo's story compresses a familiar Texas arc — Native homeland, frontier fort, railroad town, and finally a modern suburb — into one community's timeline.
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Nearby & related markers
Aledo United Methodist Church
Aledo, TX
This congregation traces its start to 1878, when Methodists acquired a share of a small frame hall in the settlement of Alma, considered the forerunner of Aledo. When the Texas & Pacific Railway crossed Parker County in 1879, the building was moved to the new town rising along the tracks, and the church grew through a century of expansions, mergers, and new sanctuaries. As the first congregation in town to own its own building, it became a cornerstone of Aledo's civic and spiritual life.
Annetta Cemetery
Aledo, TX
Community founder A. B. Fraser was a Confederate soldier who chose exile in Central America over swearing loyalty to the Union, and it was there his daughter Anneta was born in Honduras. Back in Texas by the 1870s, he built a store and freight station west of Fort Worth and named it for her; when the Texas and Pacific Railroad arrived in 1880 it adopted the name as Annetta. The cemetery that grew up here holds hundreds of graves — civic leaders, farmers, and, in a poignant testament to pioneer hardship, thirty-five infants buried between 1882 and 1910.
Andrew Hayter
Arlington, TX
A Tennessee-born Cumberland Presbyterian preacher, Andrew Shannon Hayter came to Texas around 1850 and eventually settled in Tarrant County, where he founded churches, a school and a Masonic lodge and earned his living as a surveyor. His frontier knowledge made him the natural choice in 1876 to help route the railroad and lay out a small town between Dallas and Fort Worth. Offered the honor of naming it for himself, he instead chose 'Arlington,' after Robert E. Lee's Virginia estate.
Elizabeth Cemetery
Roanoke, TX
Settled in the early 1860s, the town of Elizabeth grew into a trade center with stores, churches, a school, and a Masonic lodge. Tradition holds that William Perry Harmonson donated the acre-and-a-half graveyard in 1867 upon his mother Anna's death. When the Texas and Pacific Railroad bypassed the town in 1881 it began to fade, and today the cemetery — enlarged in 1949 and holding nearly 400 graves — is all that survives of the once-thriving village.