Mitchell County
Colorado City, Mitchell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Settled after Indians left Texas in 1875. One of 128 counties created (Aug. 21, 1876) from Bexar Territory covering West Texas to the Panhandle and El Paso. Named for Mitchell brothers, Asa and Eli, Texas War for Independence veterans. Organized Jan. 10, 1881, when the railroad came, making county seat Colorado City West Texas' "Mother City" and first boom town. Oil, sheep and cattle ranching center. Historic sites include Comanche Indian Village; Seven Wells, last buffalo watering hole. Annual events: Colorado City Frontier Roundup and Tumbleweed Festival. (1965)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Mitchell County was carved out of West Texas territory in 1876 and organized in 1881 when the railroad arrived, turning Colorado City into a booming supply hub known as the region's 'Mother City.' Named for War for Independence veterans Asa and Eli Mitchell, the county blended cattle, sheep, and later oil into its economy. Its landmarks — a former Comanche village site and Seven Wells, remembered as a last buffalo watering hole — mark the transition from Indigenous and frontier land to a railroad-era ranching center.
Why it matters
The county's story compresses the whole arc of West Texas settlement — Native homeland, open range, and railroad boom town — into a single stretch of ground.
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Related people
- · Asa Mitchell
- · Eli Mitchell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Buffalo Trails
Colorado City, TX
These preserved tracks come from an ancient buffalo trail, one of the deep grooves that thundering herds pounded single-file into the West Texas ground as they moved between grazing grounds and watering holes. Migratory routes ran from the Rio Grande to Canada, and buffalo hunters like the Mooar brothers killed thousands here in the 1870s for hides, tongues, and meat. Native peoples had long followed these paths to the herds, and later explorers and railroad engineers built roads and rail lines along the very same routes.
Fort Chadbourne
Bronte vicinity, TX
The U.S. Army planted Fort Chadbourne on the West Texas frontier in October 1852 to shield settlers pressing into country still held by Comanche and other Plains peoples. It honored Lieutenant T. L. Chadbourne, killed at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma during the Mexican-American War. From 1858 to 1861 the post doubled as a key station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route, watering stagecoaches carrying passengers and mail toward California.
Mulberry Canyon
Merkel, TX
Human activity in Mulberry Canyon reaches back to prehistoric times, when Native American peoples hunted buffalo, deer, and bear across the land. The canyon saw the 1849 forty-niner mail route and, from 1858 to 1861, the Butterfield Overland Mail's stagecoaches before cattle ranchers arrived in the 1870s and the last buffalo herds passed through in 1878. Pioneer families then planted maize, corn, and cotton and raised more than half a dozen small communities, served by ten churches and ten schools, whose descendants still occupied the canyon in the 1990s.
The Brazos River in Justiceburg
Justiceburg, TX
The stretch of the Brazos River near Justiceburg has drawn people for centuries, and the marker traces the river's many names across cultures — the Caddoan "Tokonohono," La Salle's "Malingne," and "La Trinidad" recorded by Spanish expeditions in 1716. Legends of parched travelers, from Coronado's men onward, finding lifesaving water gave rise to the enduring name Los Brazos de Dios, "the arms of God." Fresh water and the arrival of the Santa Fe railroad in 1910 spurred the town of Justiceburg, named for rancher Jefferson Davis Justice, who donated the townsite.