Roosevelt
Junction, Kimble County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The community of Roosevelt began with the establishment of a post office in 1898. Although Alice Wagner applied for the post office with another name, the postal service in Washington substituted the name Roosevelt presumably in honor of Theodore Roosevelt, whose Rough Riders visited the area prior to their legendary Spanish-American War service. Two military roads traversed this area and Roosevelt became a social center for surrounding ranch families. In addition to the post office Roosevelt included a masonic lodge, churches, stores and a school. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Kimble County community of Roosevelt got its start with an 1898 post office — and its name from Washington, apparently in honor of Theodore Roosevelt, whose Rough Riders had passed through the area before their famous Spanish-American War service. Sitting where two military roads crossed, it grew into a social hub for surrounding ranch families, with a lodge, churches, stores, and a school. It reflects the ranching frontier at the turn of the century.
Why it matters
The town's very name ties a remote Texas ranching community to the national swagger of Theodore Roosevelt and the Spanish-American War moment.
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Related people
- · Theodore Roosevelt
- · Alice Wagner
Related events
- · Spanish-American War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort McKavett - Fort Clark Military Road
Roosevelt, TX
Laid out in 1852 and reopened when the frontier forts were reactivated after the Civil War, this road ran north and south between Forts Terrett, Clark, and McKavett, its route chosen chiefly for the water along the way. It carried mail, freight, troops, and a trickle of settlers, and served as a line of march for Colonel Ranald Mackenzie's campaigns against Native peoples to the northwest. After the forts closed in 1883, ranchers used stretches of it to drive cattle to market.
Coalson-Pullen Colony
Junction, TX
Nick and Jennie Coalson opened this Kimble County ranch in 1866, scratching out a living by stockraising and hunting — their "bacon" was cured bear meat. In December 1870, while the men were away hunting, raiders attacked the cabin and killed ranch hand Joe Harris; Jennie Coalson, dressed in men's clothes, held them off until her husband returned. The Coalsons later sold to Civil War veteran and surveyor Dr. Asa Pullen, whose family's descendants still live in the county.
First Church in Community Copperas Methodist Church
Junction, TX
On the West Texas frontier of 1881, the celebrated circuit rider Andrew Jackson Potter organized this Methodist congregation, part of his lifelong work planting churches across a raw and thinly settled country. For years the faithful gathered in a schoolhouse or under a brush arbor near Copperas Creek before neighbors hauled lumber by wagon from Menard and donated their own labor to raise a church here in 1917.
Site of Fort Terrett
Sonora, TX
Fort Terrett was established by the U.S. Army in February 1852 to shield frontier settlers, and it carried the name of Lieutenant John C. Terrett, killed at Monterrey in 1846. Posts like it formed a thin line of defense across the Texas frontier before being abandoned as settlement pushed westward, and Terrett was left behind after barely two years, in 1854. Its brief life mirrors the restless army calculus of a fast-changing frontier.