Site of Town of Cummins
Sterling City, Sterling County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The pioneer settlement of Cummins developed at this site about 1890 around the saddle and harness shop of the earliest permanent settler, Mississippi native Robert Benjamin Cummins (b. 1848). A post office the following year the nearby town of Sterling City (1.9 miles east) was founded. The two towns became rivals for the designation of county seat when the Texas Legislature created Sterling County from Tom Green County on March 4, 1891. An intense publicity campaign developed, aided by the writings of the respective town newspaper editors: W. L. Thurman of the Cummins paper, the "North Concho News", and S. R. Ezzell of the "Sterling Courier". An election, conducted May 20, 1891, appeared to be a victory for Cummins until several voting boxes were dismissed for technical reasons, resulting in a tie. A second election on July 7 gave Sterling City a 13-vote margin and it was named the county seat. Most Cummins businesses and residents had moved to Sterling City by the end of 1891. Nothing remains of the early townsite, which once included a school, saloon, meat market, mercantile, blacksmith shop, and grocery stores.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Cummins grew up around 1890 beside the saddle-and-harness shop of its first permanent settler, Robert Benjamin Cummins. When Sterling County was created in 1891, it and nearby Sterling City became bitter rivals for the county seat, their newspaper editors trading barbs in print. A contested first election ended in a tie after voting boxes were thrown out; a second vote gave Sterling City the seat by 13 votes, and Cummins soon emptied — today nothing remains of the town.
Why it matters
Cummins is a classic Western ghost town, lost in the fierce county-seat contests that decided which frontier settlements would live or die.
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Related people
- · Robert Benjamin Cummins
Related events
- · Sterling County seat election (1891)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sterling County Jail
Sterling City, TX
Built in 1912, two decades after Sterling County was organized, this two-story jail was raised by the Southern Structural Steel Co. on land donated by the Stewart family, its exterior faced in locally quarried stone. The ground floor held living quarters for the sheriff, while seven cells occupied the upper story. A rear addition followed in the 1960s.
Sterling County
Sterling City, TX
The prairie split by the north Concho River was long the hunting ground of the Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Lipan, and Wichita peoples, and may have been crossed by Spanish expeditions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the 1860s and 70s came commercial buffalo hunters, one of whom, Capt. W. S. Sterling, gave his name to the creek; the outlaws Frank and Jesse James reputedly kept horse herds nearby, and the Army held Camp Elizabeth as a Fort Concho outpost. As big cattle outfits and then family homesteaders moved in, the county was created in 1891 and named for its first regular resident.
Concho, San Saba & Llano Valley Railroad Station
Sterling City, TX
When the Concho, San Saba and Llano Valley Railroad pushed a line into Sterling City in 1909, it was chasing the wealth of West Texas ranch country—livestock that needed a way to distant markets. A boxcar served as the first depot until this mission revival station rose to take its place, becoming the hub of a young ranching town. Highways and pipelines eventually siphoned away the freight, and the line went quiet in 1958, leaving the depot as the last witness to the rail era that built the area.
Foster Cemetery
Sterling City, TX
Foster Cemetery began on the ranch of Robert West and Fannie B. Foster, early settlers and civic leaders of Sterling County, when their infant daughter Fay became the first burial here in 1883. Over more than a century it grew into the resting place of the county's founders—commissioners, mayors, early ranchers, and even a saloon keeper who doubled as a cattle inspector. Among them lies Ethel Foster, a president of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs.