Community of Clyde
Clyde, Callahan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Settlers began moving to this area when the Texas and Pacific Railroad completed its line in December 1880. Many located near the commissary of railroad crew foreman Robert Clyde, for whom the town is named. A post office was established in 1881. The schoolhouse was used for church meetings and local court proceedings. A sign on the water tower in 1920 proclaimed Clyde "The California of Texas" because of its fertile soil and shallow water table. On three separate occasions, in 1895, 1938, and 1950, destructive tornadoes have hit the community. (1980)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlers began arriving here after the Texas and Pacific Railroad reached the area in December 1880, many clustering near the commissary of crew foreman Robert Clyde, whose name the town adopted. A post office opened in 1881, and the schoolhouse doubled as church and courtroom. Boosters once painted Clyde "The California of Texas" on the water tower for its fertile soil, even as tornadoes struck the town in 1895, 1938, and 1950.
Why it matters
Clyde is a classic railroad-born Texas town, its very name and location dictated by where the tracks and their crews happened to stop.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Robert Clyde
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Fort Phantom Hill Corn Road
Clyde, TX
Established in 1851 to move supplies between Austin and the remote outpost of Fort Phantom Hill, this road cut diagonally across the county from northwest to southeast. Though regular troops abandoned the fort in 1854 and the supply line closed with them, the route lived on, traveled by emigrants, soldiers, surveyors, and others pushing into the West Texas frontier.
Callahan County
Baird, TX
Callahan County was carved from the vast Bexar Territory in 1858, recreated in 1876, and finally organized in 1877. It honors James H. Callahan, a soldier of the Texas Revolution and captain of the Texas Rangers. The county seat migrated from Callahan City to Belle Plain before settling at Baird, a crossroads where early military roads, the Chisholm Trail, and the first government telegraph line all met.
Belle Plaine Cemetery
Baird, TX
Belle Plaine's residents were burying their dead here by 1878, the oldest marked grave belonging to sixteen-year-old Virgil Hill. The little community's fate turned on the railroad: when the Texas & Pacific rerouted its line through nearby Baird in 1883 instead of Belle Plaine, the town began to wither, and the railway deeded the graveyard to Callahan County the following year. Though the town had all but vanished by 1909, burials of area pioneers and veterans continued.
Military Telegraph Line
Baird vicinity, TX
In the mid-1870s the U.S. Army strung a telegraph line across this stretch of West Texas to link Fort Griffin and Fort Concho, part of a wider web wiring the frontier forts together. The line let commanders coordinate patrols and supply across vast, thinly settled distances during the last decades of the Indian wars on the Southern Plains.