Old Jack County Courthouse Cornerstone
Jacksboro, Jack County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Removed 1885 from third Jack County Courthouse when building was razed. Mounted here in 1966. Old Courthouse was of native limestone, quarried in Jacksboro. For its day, workmanship and stone of finest quality. Bell is also a relic of the third courthouse. It was part of the mechanism in the building's clock tower, and was mounted in frame here by Jacksboro firemen. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This cornerstone and bell are relics of Jack County's third courthouse, a building of native limestone quarried right in Jacksboro and praised in its day for fine workmanship. When that courthouse was razed in 1885, the cornerstone was saved, and in 1966 townspeople mounted it here; local firemen later set the old clock-tower bell nearby. Together they preserve a piece of the county's frontier civic life.
Why it matters
On the edge of the settled frontier, a sturdy stone courthouse announced permanence and order — and its saved cornerstone keeps that founding ambition visible generations later.
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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.
Fort Richardson Hotel
Jacksboro, TX
Built in 1899 by H. J. Hensley and L. A. Wilson on the site of the earlier Wichita House, the Fort Richardson Hotel served the frontier town of Jacksboro near the U.S. Army post whose name it borrowed. It was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1967 and preserved by a Hensley descendant.
Butterfield Stage Line
Jacksboro, TX
Through this spot ran the Butterfield line of the Southern Overland Mail, which from 1858 to 1861 carried mail and passengers by stagecoach the astonishing 2,795 miles between St. Louis and San Francisco. Twice a week the coaches rolled through, and the reliability of the service over such punishing distance made it one of the great transportation feats of its age—until the Civil War severed the southern route.
G. D. Cross
Jacksboro, TX
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.