Pilot Point Post-Signal
Pilot Point, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First published as the "Pilot Point Post," this newspaper was established in 1878 by David J. Moffitt (1848-1917) and James T. Jones (1845-1915). In its early years, "The Post" supported the democratic party and local commerce and opposed the lawless element in town. Between 1888 and 1898 "The Post" merged with "The Mirror" and then with "The Signal" and has operated since then as the "Pilot Point Post-Signal". As Denton County's oldest continuing newspaper, "The Post-Signal" has played a significant role in bringing news to the community and surrounding areas. (1984)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
First published in 1878 as the Pilot Point Post by David J. Moffitt and James T. Jones, this newspaper backed the Democratic party and local commerce while taking aim at the town's lawless element. Through mergers with the Mirror and then the Signal between 1888 and 1898, it became the Pilot Point Post-Signal. As Denton County's oldest continuously published paper, it has carried the news of the community for well over a century.
Why it matters
Long-running local newspapers like this one were the connective tissue of American small towns, recording daily life and shaping civic opinion across generations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The year was 1878, just one year after the end of Reconstruction, and the American West was filling with new towns hungry for the trappings of settled life. Chief among those was a newspaper. In a young community, a paper was proof that the town intended to last — that it had commerce worth advertising, opinions worth printing, and a future worth recording.
Pilot Point, in Denton County, was such a town. North Texas in this period was a landscape of new farms, growing trade, and the constant push and pull between frontier roughness and civic order. A newspaper planted itself squarely in the middle of that tension, speaking for the merchants and the churchgoers against the disorder that came with a raw young town.
The late nineteenth century was the golden age of the American local paper. Printing had become cheap enough that even a modest town could support one, and the men who ran them were often as much civic boosters as journalists — determined to shape the place they were reporting on.
People & events
The paper began life as the Pilot Point Post, founded in 1878 by two partners: David J. Moffitt, who lived from 1848 to 1917, and James T. Jones, who lived from 1845 to 1915. They were men of their moment, born before the Civil War and building a business in its long aftermath.
In its early years the Post knew exactly what it stood for. It backed the Democratic party and championed local commerce, and it set itself against what the record simply calls the lawless element in town — the gamblers, drifters, and troublemakers that every frontier community wrestled with. A newspaper taking sides like this was not unusual; papers of the era were openly partisan and proudly local.
The paper's name tells its own story of survival through consolidation. Between 1888 and 1898 the Post merged first with the Mirror and then with the Signal, emerging as the Pilot Point Post-Signal. Such mergers were common as small papers competed and combined, and the result here was durable: the Post-Signal went on to become the oldest continuing newspaper in Denton County, carrying the community's news across generations.
Its place in the American story
Local newspapers like this one were the connective tissue of small-town America. Before radio, before television, and long before the internet, the weekly paper was how a community knew itself — who had married, who had died, whose crops had failed, what the town council had decided, and what the wider world was doing.
They were also engines of civic identity. By taking positions, endorsing candidates, and campaigning against disorder, papers helped a raw settlement imagine itself as a real town with real standards. The line between reporting the news and shaping the community was thin and often deliberately crossed.
The endurance of a paper founded in 1878 is itself historically significant. Across the country, most frontier papers flared briefly and vanished, or merged into oblivion. A title that survived through consolidation and kept publishing for more than a century became a living archive — its bound volumes a day-by-day record of ordinary American life that few other institutions bothered to keep.
If you visit
Pilot Point sits in Denton County, north of the Dallas–Fort Worth sprawl, and it makes a rewarding stop for anyone drawn to the texture of an old North Texas town. Come thinking about the written word — this is a place to reflect on how a community first learned to talk to itself in print.
As you walk the town, imagine the paper's early decades: two partners setting type, taking sides in local politics, and chronicling a place still deciding what kind of town it wanted to be. The mergers recorded on the marker are a reminder that survival often meant joining forces, and that the paper you would have read carried the DNA of several earlier ones.
Pair the marker with the town's historic core and you have a fine afternoon of small-town history. Newspapers are among the least monumental of institutions and among the most important, and a stop here is a quiet way to honor the humble machinery that kept a community's memory alive.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · David J. Moffitt
- · James T. Jones
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jacob Frederick Elsasser
Sanger, TX
Born in Germany in 1834, Jacob Frederick Elsasser immigrated to America and ran a cigar factory in Chicago with his father and brothers until the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed it. He then resettled in Texas with his Swiss-born wife Catharine, farming east of Sanger, and after their first house burned they built this residence in 1901. A daughter's family lived in the home into 1939.
Roark-Griffith Pottery Site
Cross Roads, TX
Stoneware pottery was vital everyday industry in 19th-century Texas, and this site was one of five kilns that made Denton County a pottery center. Missouri-trained master potter James M. Roark apprenticed nearby before partnering to start a pottery works near Big Elm Creek in 1871, later selling it to the Griffith family. At its heart was a 12-foot beehive brick kiln that fired utilitarian ware—pitchers, crocks, churns, and preserve jars—until the business closed around 1900.
Ford, O'Neil
Denton, TX
O'Neil Ford grew up in Sherman and Denton and learned his craft largely by correspondence course and hands-on work, meeting his mentor, architect David Williams, on a Denton church construction site. From the 1930s onward he became a defining architect of the American Southwest, designing Denton's Little Chapel in the Woods, restoring San Antonio's La Villita, and creating the Tower of the Americas for HemisFair. Blending natural materials, clean lines, and open spaces with the work of craftsmen and artists, he became an AIA Fellow and served on President Johnson's National Council for the Arts.
1927 Denton City Hall
Denton, TX
Outgrowing an 1877 red-brick building, Denton commissioned this Spanish Renaissance city hall from the Fort Worth firm Van Slyke and Woodruff, dedicating it in October 1927 with Governor Dan Moody in attendance. Reminiscent of South Texas missions, the white-brick building with its arched windows and tiled roof also housed the fire station, its planned belfry meant to hold the alarm bell. After city offices moved out in 1969, it served as the Firehouse Theatre and later the police department, and was long famous for its elaborate annual Christmas displays.