Home of Robert E. Howard
Cross Plains, Callahan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Adventure and fantasy writer (and creator of Conan) Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) moved in 1919 to this homesite with his parents, Dr. Isaac and Hester (Ervin) Howard. Robert E. Howard wrote hundreds of stories, spanning several genres, and more than 700 poems in his bedroom at this site.Robert began writing at an early age, when he was about eight or nine years old. Robert's mother enjoyed reciting poetry to him and encouraged his writing. He started working to get his stories published when he was fifteen. At the age of eighteen, Robert sold his first story, "Spear and Fang," to pulp magazine Weird Tales for its July 1925 issue. Shortly after the Howards arrived in Cross Plains, so did an oil boom. Robert observed the negative effects an oil boom can have on the townspeople, which contributed to his philosophies and many of his stories. Often his stories told about the corruption of civilization and the rise from and plummet into barbarism, with one moral man against a multitude of immortal adversaries. In his last few years, Robert left clues of his suicidal mood through his poetry, as well as making plans in the event of his demise. He had become primary caretaker for his mother, who had contracted tuberculosis. Just three days after his mother slipped into a coma, Robert committed suicide on June 11, 1936. His mother died the next day, and on June 14 there was a double funeral.An internationally-known author and father of the sword and sorcery sub-genre, Howard's stories have influenced several generations. His works have been translated into 23 languages. Decades after his death, Robert E. Howard and his characters are still being studied, published, filmed, role-played, and enjoyed.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1919 the Howard family moved to this Cross Plains home, where their son Robert Ervin Howard would write hundreds of stories and more than 700 poems in his bedroom before his death in 1936. Encouraged by his mother and selling his first story to Weird Tales at eighteen, Howard created Conan the Barbarian and effectively founded the sword-and-sorcery genre; the corruption-and-barbarism themes running through his work were sharpened by the oil boom he watched transform his small town. He took his own life at thirty, but his characters have since been translated into 23 languages and adapted across film, gaming, and print.
Why it matters
This modest house is the birthplace of an American literary genre, showing how a small Texas oil town shaped one of the twentieth century's most widely read fantasy writers.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Robert Ervin Howard
- · Dr. Isaac Howard
- · Hester Ervin Howard
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Higginbotham Brothers and Company
Cross Plains, TX
The Higginbotham brothers opened their first general store in De Leon in 1881, and over the following decades combinations of brothers, in-laws, and friends spread the name across Texas, selling everything a town needed — right down to undertaking. This Cross Plains store opened in 1914 and still keeps its original glass counters, cabinets, mirrors, tin ceiling, and floors in use. A century on, the company counted dozens of Texas locations, a rare survivor of the old-fashioned mercantile chain.
Cross Plains Review
Cross Plains, TX
Belmont L. Shields founded the Cross Plains Review in April 1909, deliberately getting his paper going before the railroad arrived — which it did when the Texas Central reached town in 1912 and most of the community picked up and moved a mile to the new townsite. Passing through a series of owners after 1914, the Review became the town's memory, chronicling everything from local growth to the death of pulp writer Robert E. Howard and the wildfires of 2005. As the oldest business in Cross Plains, it is woven into the town's story.
Cottonwood Bank and Post Office
Cottonwood, TX
Around 1911 W. F. Griffin opened a small frame bank in Cottonwood, where a single officer, Paul Ramsey, served as teller, cashier, loan officer, and custodian all at once. When the railroad bypassed the town, its people drifted away and the bank closed in 1915; Hazel Respess later ran a post office out of the building for fifty years, keeping it a gathering place long after commerce had gone.
Cross Cut Cemetery
Brownwood vicinity, TX
Southern families settling here after the Civil War formed a community first called Cross Out, renamed Cross Cut in 1897 by a clerical error on a post office application. The cemetery began in 1879 with the burial of Caroline Pentecost Elsberry. An oil strike in 1923 briefly swelled the town, but by 1940 the dead outnumbered the living, and after the school consolidated in 1954 only a few buildings and this graveyard remained.