Swisher County
Tulia, Swisher County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Formed from Young and Bexar territories. Created: August 21, 1876. Organized: July 17, 1890. Named in honor of James Gibson Swisher, 1794-1864. Conspicuous for gallantry at the storming of Bexar, 1835. Signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836. County seat, Tulia.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Swisher County honors James Gibson Swisher (1794-1864), who won distinction at the storming of Bexar in 1835 and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. The county was created in 1876 and organized in 1890, with Tulia as its seat, from lands once part of the vast Young and Bexar territories. Its name carries a founding figure of the Texas Revolution into the settlement of the Panhandle.
Why it matters
Naming a Panhandle county for a revolutionary signer stitched the memory of Texas independence into the later westward settlement of the plains.
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Related people
- · James Gibson Swisher
Related events
- · Storming of Bexar
- · Texas Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Rose Hill Cemetery
Tulia, TX
This hillside burial ground began in October 1890, just months after Swisher County organized and Tulia became county seat, when the family of 18-year-old Louis Harral won permission to bury him above Middle Tule Creek. A four-year-old boy joined him twelve days later, and by 1906 five acres were set aside as a community cemetery, formally named Rose Hill by a cemetery association in 1916. Among those interred are county officials, two lawmen killed in the line of duty, and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.
Two Miles North of Here
Tulia, TX
After U.S. cavalry under Mackenzie routed Southern Plains tribes at Palo Duro Canyon in September 1874, the troops slaughtered roughly 1,450 captured horses two miles north of this marker. Destroying the herd left the surviving warriors afoot, forcing them back onto their reservations.
The Old MacKenzie Trail
Plainview, TX
This marker commemorates the trail broken in 1871 by General Ranald Slidell MacKenzie and his 4th U.S. Cavalry as they campaigned across the West Texas plains against roving bands of Indians. Larry Chittenden's mournful verse, quoted on the marker, conjures the wagon trains, soldiers, and lonely prairie graves that once followed its course. Erected in 1936 for the Texas Centennial, it fixes the fading route in public memory.
Briscoe County
Silverton, TX
Created in 1876 and organized in 1892, Briscoe County honors Andrew Briscoe, a defender of Texas liberty who fought at the Battle of Concepción, the capture of Bexar, and San Jacinto before serving as chief justice of Harris County. Carved from the vast Bexar Territory, the county took shape as settlement pushed into the Texas Panhandle, with Silverton as its seat. Its very name links this frontier land to the generation that won Texas independence.