G. D. Cross
Jacksboro, Jack County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1855 - 1941) Born in Arkansas. Served in Hunter's Texas Ranger Company 1873-1874, helping remove Indians from Texas. Later became merchant and farmer. Married Mary A. E. Shawver, 1881. Had 13 children. Built this picnic table (where his ranger unit once camped) to be used at family reunions. (1969)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
G. D. Cross, born in Arkansas in 1855, rode with a Texas Ranger company in the mid-1870s during the violent frontier campaigns that pushed Native peoples out of North Texas. He later settled into ordinary life as a merchant and farmer, raising thirteen children with his wife Mary. In his memory of those ranging days, he built a picnic table on the very ground where his unit had once camped, turning a former military bivouac into a gathering place for family reunions.
Why it matters
The marker captures the frontier-era Ranger service that opened West Texas to Anglo settlement — and the way an aging pioneer chose to memorialize that hard history with a family table on the old campsite.
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Related people
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jack County
Jacksboro, TX
Created in 1856 and named for Texas Revolution patriots W. H. and P. C. Jack, Jack County sat squarely on the violent post-Civil War frontier. Its citizens voted overwhelmingly against secession in 1861, and after the war Fort Richardson (1867) anchored the U.S. Army's campaigns against the Plains tribes. The 1871 Kiowa raid on the Warren Wagon Train prompted General Sherman to send Colonel Ranald MacKenzie after the raiders; the resulting trial of chiefs Satanta and Big Tree was among the first prosecutions of Plains Indians in a civilian court. The county was also, improbably, home to a 1907 corn club that helped seed the national 4-H movement.
Officers' Quarters
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Built in 1867 from cottonwood cut in nearby river bottoms, this is one of five original officers' quarters at the Jacksboro army post and reputedly one of the last such structures standing in the country. Its style was typical of 19th-century western army posts. Among the officers quartered here was General Ranald S. MacKenzie, who led the campaigns that forced Native peoples onto reservations between 1871 and 1874.
James B. Dosher
Jacksboro, TX
James B. Dosher came to Texas in 1847 and rode with the Texas Rangers on the unsettled northern frontier before farming in Jack County. His life traced the arc of a hard border era, from Ranger companies to service with Confederate and Texas State forces during the Civil War. In 1870 he was scouting for the U.S. Army as a civilian guide when his gallantry at Bluff Creek earned him the Medal of Honor.
Fort Richardson
Jacksboro, TX
Established by the U.S. War Department in November 1867, Fort Richardson stood as the northernmost of a chain of posts guarding the Texas frontier against raids in the years after the Civil War. It was named for General Israel B. Richardson, mortally wounded at Antietam in 1862. As settlement pushed westward the fort's purpose faded, and it was abandoned in 1878; what stands here was partially reconstructed in 1936.