Search Markers

McGregor, TX

Glenn Crain came to McGregor with his family before 1886, the year his father became the city's first mayor, and went into the insurance business. After marrying Mary E. Gulledge in 1890, he hired builder Charles Walsh to raise this home in 1892 in the Shingle Style, a design rarely seen in Texas, with a cross-gable plan and a distinctive semicircular belvedere. Active in the local Methodist church, the couple raised their family here, and their descendants held the house for more than a century.

Granbury, TX

Attorney and town builder James Farr raised this store in 1885, and by 1888 it belonged to the four Glenn brothers, civic leaders who ran the family grocery here. After an 1891 fire swept the block, contractors rebuilt with heavy iron-clad timbers supporting a handsome Victorian brick front—an example of the sturdy commercial architecture that lined a booming Texas courthouse square.

Tolar, TX

Though it sits in Hood County, Glenn Cemetery grew up to serve the Erath County community of Bluff Dale to the west. Andrew Jackson Glenn, its namesake, donated the land in 1897, but graves already dotted the property, the earliest dating to 1867. Many of Bluff Dale's leading early residents—and veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Civil War—rest here.

Del Rio, TX

Local contractor Daniel Glenn built this brick residence in 1900–01, working a band of decorative brickwork into its design, and sold it in 1901 to the widow Bessie Chisum. In 1906 she married Luke Dowe, a border peace officer who served first with the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion and later with U.S. Customs. The Dowes made the house their home for fifty years.

Glenville, WV

The Glenville Normal School was founded in 1872 to prepare schoolteachers for central West Virginia, part of a wave of "normal schools" created across the country to professionalize teaching. Serving a rural Appalachian region with few schools, it supplied the teachers who staffed the area's one-room and village classrooms. The institution eventually grew into today's Glenville State.

Glenville, WV

Glenville State traces its roots to 1872, when West Virginia established a normal school here to train teachers for the young state's expanding public schools. Over the following century the school grew from that modest teacher-training mission into a full state college serving central West Virginia's Appalachian communities. It has long been one of the region's most important institutions of higher learning.

Groveton, TX

Groveton sprang up almost overnight in 1882 when the Trinity County Lumber Company platted a town in the East Texas pineywoods, and within months it became the county seat. As families poured in, the company deeded ten acres in 1896 for a cemetery, though the first burial had already taken place in 1885. Fittingly for a timber town, virgin pine felled on this very ground helped build the Texas State Capitol in Austin during the 1880s.

Beeville, TX

When Beeville's Evergreen Cemetery began to fill, local undertaker Christopher Rotzien bought adjoining land in 1901, and Margaret Ann Eeds became the first burial that April. Taken over by the Beeville Cemetery Association the next year and expanded over the decades, Glenwood grew into a landscaped resting place for Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish citizens, including war veterans and the sister of Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie.

Crockett, TX

Glenwood Cemetery opened soon after Houston County was carved out and Crockett was named county seat in 1837, during the days of the Republic of Texas. As the town's oldest burial ground, it holds early Texas heroes and statesmen, a man who is said to have been visited by David Crockett on his way to the Alamo, a grandnephew of President Monroe, and the town's first elected mayor. Its weathered stones map the founding generation of this East Texas community.

Crockett, TX

This northern section belongs to Glenwood Cemetery, opened in the original townsite of Crockett soon after Houston County and its county seat were established in 1837. Among its burials are early Texas heroes and statesmen, a man said to have been visited by David Crockett en route to the Alamo, a grandnephew of President Monroe, and the town's first elected mayor. The grounds hold the founding generation of this East Texas community.

Glidden, TX

Before the rails arrived, this stretch of Colorado County launched cattle drives north to distant markets, and early settlers ranched, contracted, and built the mercantile houses that would last a century. The railroad changed everything: in 1882 T. J. Oakes sold land to the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio, which raised a depot, roundhouse, and turntable, and the townsite—named for railroad engineer F. G. Glidden—was platted in 1885. Scotch-Irish and English rail workers poured in, and Glidden grew into a busy rail center.

Glidden, TX

In the railroad town of Glidden, a community congregation gathering as early as 1895 was formally organized in 1906 as the Glidden Missionary Baptist Church in Christ, calling its first pastor the next year. In those early days converts were baptized in the Colorado River or in the water pits at the railroad roundhouse. The fellowship, now simply the Glidden Baptist Church, became a fixture in the town's life.

Corpus Christi, TX

This memorial honors the American service members who fought in the Global War on Terrorism, the campaigns launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks that spanned Afghanistan, Iraq, and operations around the world. Placed among Corpus Christi's cluster of veterans' monuments, it commemorates a generation of men and women called to a new and open-ended kind of conflict. It stands for the sacrifices of those who served in the nation's longest era of continuous combat.

Giddings, TX

George Coleman Truitt founded this predominantly African-American community, building homes for tenant farmers and running its only store, then in 1887 donating land atop a rocky rise for a school that doubled as a church. As families from neighboring settlements sent their children, the school grew and was eventually rebuilt as a four-room Rosenwald school. The Globe Hill Baptist Church, organized in 1912 under the Reverend Frank Ruffin, swelled to hundreds and still draws former residents back each year for its annual celebrations.

York, PA · est. 1949

The old Globe Inn that once stood here was York's finest lodging, welcoming statesmen, officers, and travelers passing through the town. Its most celebrated guest arrived in 1825, when the aging Marquis de Lafayette, touring the nation he had helped free, was honored with a grand reception. His gracious toast—"To the Town of York"—was long remembered as a highlight of that triumphal visit.

Washington, PA · est. 1953

Opened in 1798 by David Morris, the Globe Inn stood at the heart of Washington during the golden age of the National Road, the federal highway that carried a river of travelers, freight, and stagecoaches across the Alleghenies. Its guest register boasted five U.S. presidents, and in May 1825 the inn hosted the Marquis de Lafayette during his triumphant farewell tour of the nation he had helped free. The Globe was a premier stop on one of early America's most important overland routes.

Springfield, IL

In November 1842 a young Springfield lawyer named Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd and brought her to board at the Globe Tavern, a modest inn that stood on this spot. The newlyweds lived here through the spring of 1844, and it was under this roof that their first son, Robert, was born. It was the couple's first home together, years before the White House.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2006

At the height of the Cold War, the CIA hatched one of its boldest intelligence gambits: recovering a Soviet submarine from three miles down in the Pacific. The cover story was billionaire Howard Hughes mining the seabed for manganese, but the true purpose was espionage, and the Glomar Explorer—built at the Sun Shipbuilding yard in Chester—was the improbable machine to do it. In 1974 its giant claw lifted portions of the wreck, and the recovered Soviet sailors were given a burial at sea.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2021

Gloria Casarez began as a grassroots organizer in Philadelphia, fighting for economic justice, welfare rights, and affordable housing before becoming a leading voice for LGBTQ+ equality. She directed the Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative, building nationally recognized programs for men of color and transgender people. Appointed the city's first director of LGBT Affairs, she helped Philadelphia adopt some of the strongest LGBT protections in the country.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1954

Gloria Dei traces its congregation to 1677 and its distinctive Swedish-designed church, built between 1698 and 1703, replacing an earlier log blockhouse used for worship. It stands as the oldest church in Philadelphia and a rare survivor of New Sweden, the short-lived Swedish colony that predated William Penn along the Delaware.

Santa Fe County, NM

In March 1862, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Glorieta Pass in the mountains southeast of Santa Fe, in a fight remembered as the "Gettysburg of the West." When Union troops destroyed the Confederate supply train, Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley's campaign to seize the Southwest and its route to California collapsed.

Weches, TX

The Glover School opened in 1881 to serve the scattered farm families of the rural Glover Community, beginning as a one-room schoolhouse raised on donated land under teacher James Breeze. Over the decades it grew, burned in 1938, and was rebuilt, finally merging into the Kennard district in 1967. Long after the doors closed, former students kept gathering for reunions—proof of how much a country school could anchor a place.

New York, NY

On October 18, 1776, Colonel John Glover led a small force of Patriots in a fighting delay against advancing British and Hessian troops under General William Howe in what became the Battle of Pell's Point. By slowing the enemy's flanking advance, Glover's men bought George Washington's army the time it needed to withdraw north toward White Plains and Westchester. This boulder marks the ground near where that stand was made.

Lincoln, TX

Founded as Hannes School No. 43 in 1893 when F. Soder deeded two acres, this Lee County school was renamed for Christian Gloyna after he bought the surrounding land in 1900. As Gloyna Common School District No. 17, it spanned nearly 10,000 acres, doubled as a place of worship, and replaced its original one-room building with a larger one in 1923. Falling enrollment led to its annexation by the Dime Box district in 1950 after roughly fifty years of service.

Lehighton, PA · est. 2005

In 1746 Moravian missionaries established Gnadenhuetten, a mission town meant to shelter a growing community of Mohican and Delaware converts and the first European settlement in what is now Carbon County. As the French and Indian War engulfed the frontier, tensions boiled over, and on November 24, 1755, the settlement was attacked and burned in a raid encouraged by the French. The victims were laid to rest in what is now the Lehighton Cemetery nearby.

Gober, TX

On a summer day in 1889, the Rev. S.P. Clement and twelve charter members organized a Baptist congregation in the small Fannin County community of Gober. Early worship happened in the one-room schoolhouse and under a brush arbor before the members raised the town's first church building in 1893 on land donated by the Eads family. Larger sanctuaries followed in 1924 and 1953, and the congregation kept up an active missions program at home and abroad.

Bonham, TX

The earliest grave in this Fannin County cemetery belongs to R.M.C. Self, who died in 1865, and a decade later settlers drawn by the beauty of the spot raised a brush tabernacle nearby for gatherings. Community custom went so far as to buy a marble slab for a man who died in 1907 with no family or funds. The Carpenter family gave land in 1909, a caretaker came in 1942, and an association formed in 1977 to tend the hundreds of graves, many of them military veterans.

Gober, TX

Opened by 1933 and rebuilt in sturdier tile and steel in 1956, the Gober Garage kept the cars and farm machinery of this small community running for six decades. More than a repair shop, it doubled as a gathering place where farmers paused from the fields to talk. Its long run and eventual closing trace the rise and thinning of rural Texas towns.

Gober, TX

First settled in the 1840s as Grittersville, the town was platted in 1885 and renamed Gober to honor early settlers. Public schooling began in a one-room building that doubled as church and social hall; after fire destroyed it in 1924, a two-story frame school rose in its place, followed by a brick schoolhouse in 1938-39 and the formation of the Gober Independent School District. Declining enrollment closed the school in 1969.

Paducah, TX

Built in 1896 when many townspeople still lived in dugouts, this ornate late-Victorian house belonged to Joe L. Gober, the first sheriff of newly settled Cottle County. Its lumber and fine gingerbread trim had to be hauled by wagon from the railheads at Childress and Quanah, years before Paducah gained its own rail line in 1909.

Athens, GA

A bronze statue of Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, presides over Athens, Georgia — a city named in the early 19th century for the intellectual capital of the classical world. Home to the University of Georgia, the nation's first state-chartered university, Athens embraced its classical namesake as an emblem of learning and civic aspiration. The figure of Athena, patroness of the original Athens, became a fitting symbol for a Southern town that styled itself the 'Classic City.'

Jefferson, TX

Schoolteacher Margaret Godfrey bought this Jefferson lot in 1892 and built a Folk Victorian house trimmed with Queen Anne spindlework, though she moved away and died only a few years later. Dr. Robert Moseley acquired it in 1901, and from 1910 to 1987 the family of attorney John Singleton lived in and enlarged the home. Its decorative detailing on a simple folk form typifies the modest but ornamented houses of turn-of-the-century Texas towns.

Montpelier, IN · est. 1989

Under the 1818 Treaty of St. Mary's, the United States reserved a 3,840-acre tract on the Salamonie River for Chief Francois Godfroy of the Miami Nation, at a place called La Petite Prairie. Such individual reserves let some Miami leaders remain on ancestral ground even as broader lands were ceded. Godfroy's reserve was itself sold off in stages in 1827 and 1836.

Godley, TX

Godley began in 1886 when rancher and lumber merchant B. B. Godley donated land for a townsite and a Santa Fe railroad right-of-way, though the school district predated the town by two years. Godley College opened in 1899, became a high school, and grew through rural consolidation and New Deal aid in the late 1930s. A WPA-funded main building of 1940, joined to a 1937 gymnasium and 1939 auditorium built with National Youth Administration help, created an unusually large rural campus clad in distinctive giraffe-pattern native stone.

Cypress Mill, TX

German immigrant Carl A. Goeth settled near the well-known Indian Spring in 1865 and, in 1882, raised this two-story limestone house in the sturdy building tradition of his homeland. Patriarch of a large and prominent family, Goeth also served in the Texas Legislature in 1887-88.

Buda, TX

Established in the 1870s by James Taylor Goforth, who ran a general store that served as social hub and informal bank, Goforth became a center of Hays County's cotton economy. At its height between 1880 and 1906 it boasted a drugstore, doctor's office, meat market, stable, and blacksmith, and Goforth later ran one of the area's largest cotton gins. But rail lines bypassed the town, and soil erosion, crop failure, and a 1926 worm infestation emptied it into a ghost town.

Aledo, TX

On land the Goforth family settled in 1857, a small family burial ground holds four graves, among them a two-year-old boy laid to rest in 1863 while his father was away serving in the 18th Texas Cavalry. Neighbors from the Chadwick family shared the plot as well. It is a quiet record of how sparse frontier settlement and Civil War service shaped early Parker County life.

Cuero, TX

Built in 1895 for Louis Gohmert and his wife Martha, this late Victorian home shows the confidence of a prospering Texas town, with imported leaded-glass windows, metal "lace" trim, and Italian tile. Gohmert had come from Germany as a boy and rose to become secretary-treasurer of a wholesale firm. Designed by Austin architect A. O. Watson, the house has been carefully preserved since 1952.

Humboldt County, NV

Golconda began as a Utah Territory mining town and a welcome landmark on the California Emigrant Trail, best known for the hot springs that fed a swanky resort hotel staffed by doctors. Its fortunes rose with the rails: in 1868 it became an ore-shipping point on the new Central Pacific, and renewed mining in 1897 prompted a short narrow-gauge line running south to the Adelaide mine. The town swelled to some five hundred residents by 1899, only to slump the following year when the mine and mill closed and rail service to the mine ended.

Richland, WA

Richland grew from a small farming settlement into a booming government town during World War II, when it housed workers for the nearby Hanford site. A designated historic district here preserves a cluster of buildings that speak to the community's rapid mid-20th-century growth and its distinctive planned-town character. Walking these blocks offers a glimpse of how the American West was reshaped by federal investment and wartime industry.

Esmeralda County, NV

First called Lime Point for deposits found in 1868, this camp was reborn after the great Goldfield strikes of 1902 drew prospectors to the district. In 1908 miners uncovered rich hornsilver, renamed the town Hornsilver, and threw up more than 225 wood-frame buildings, tents, and shacks with a newspaper, post office, stores, and saloons. Renamed Gold Point after 1930 as gold outpaced silver, the camp faded when World War II drew its miners away to essential wartime industries in 1942.

Town of Huntington, NY

During World War II, the Long Island town of Huntington sent scores of its young men into uniform, and this beachside memorial gathers 127 of their names under the banner of the "Gold Star Battalion." The gold star had by then become the nation's emblem of a family that lost a loved one in service, a tradition carried forward from the First World War. Set where the community gathers by the water, the monument turns an ordinary shoreline into a place of remembrance for a generation that answered the call from a single town.

Corpus Christi, TX

Dedicated in 1931 in Corpus Christi's Spohn Park, this memorial honored the mothers of Nueces County servicemen who died in World War I. Championed by the Daughters of the American Revolution and designed by Mrs. Frank de Garmo, it was the first Gold Star Court of Honor in Texas, complete with a lighted three-foot gold star and, later, a captured British field piece. Listed in the National Register in 1988, it was restored by volunteers beginning in 2000.

Wilmington, NC

Gold Star Families Memorial Monuments like this one belong to a nationwide effort to honor the families of American service members who died in the line of duty. The "Gold Star" tradition reaches back to World War I, when households hung service banners bearing a blue star for a loved one in uniform—and a gold star when that loved one never came home. Standing in Wilmington, this monument gives those families a permanent place of recognition, turning private grief into public remembrance.

Frisco, TX

The Gold Star Families Memorial Monument is part of a national network of monuments conceived by Hershel 'Woody' Williams, the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the Battle of Iwo Jima, to honor the families of American service members killed in the line of duty. The term 'Gold Star' dates to World War I, when families hung service flags with a blue star for each member serving and replaced it with a gold star if that person died. This Frisco monument continues a century-old American tradition of publicly honoring military sacrifice across every war.

Elkin, NC

Gold Star Families Memorial Monuments honor the families of American service members who died in the line of duty, a tradition of remembrance rooted in the service flags families displayed during wartime. This monument in Elkin joins a nationwide network of such memorials dedicated to those who gave their lives for the country. It stands as a gathering place for reflection on sacrifice that reaches across generations of American conflicts.

Fishers, IN

A Gold Star Family Memorial honors the families of American service members who died in the line of duty, its cut-out soldier silhouette evoking the loved one no longer present. Part of a national program of such monuments, it recognizes the enduring sacrifice borne by those left behind across generations of American conflict.

Turner County, GA

The Gold Star Memorial program extends the garden clubs' Blue Star tradition to honor Gold Star families — those who lost a loved one in military service. The term dates to World War I, when a family replaced the blue star in its service flag with a gold one after a death in uniform. Sponsored by the Camellia District Garden Clubs with the Garden Club of Georgia and the state transportation department, this marker stands in south-central Georgia's Turner County.

Peoria Heights, IL · est. 2016

Dedicated in 2016, this Gold Star Memorial honors Gold Star families whose loved ones died defending the United States. The gold star traces to World War I, when families replaced the blue star in their service flags with gold to mark a death in uniform. Sponsored by the Peoria Garden Club, the marker carries that tradition of remembrance into central Illinois.

Houston County, GA

This tribute belongs to the Gold Star tradition, in which the families of service members killed in the line of duty are honored with a gold star—a practice that grew out of the service flags of the World War era, when a blue star marked a loved one at war and a gold star marked one who did not return. Placed in Houston County near Robins Air Force Base and its Museum of Aviation, it was sponsored by the Greenbriar Garden Club with the Garden Club of Georgia. Markers like this turn a quiet roadside into a place of remembrance for the cost borne by military families.

Oak Park, IL

This memorial lists the "Gold Star" men of Oak Park who gave their lives in the First World War, naming soldiers, Marines, and aviators from units like the 6th Marines and the 131st Infantry. The gold star became the nation's symbol for a family that had lost a service member, and honor rolls like this one turned private loss into shared civic memory. Each name marks a young man who left an Illinois suburb and did not return.

Anchorage, AK

This cluster of three monuments honors those who served and died in uniform — one for fallen service members broadly, one for the fallen stationed at nearby Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, and one for the military working dogs of the Vietnam War. Together they gather several strands of remembrance in a single quiet space.

New Kensington, PA

In the mill towns of the Allegheny Valley, as across America, a "Gold Star Mother" was a woman who had lost a son or daughter in the nation's wars — the gold star replacing the blue one families hung in their windows while a loved one served. This honor roll gathers the names tied to New Kensington's fallen, a community's ledger of grief kept in bronze and stone. The tradition took hold after World War I and endured through the wars that followed.

Fredericksburg, TX

Built in 1902 as a modest one-story limestone house, this Fredericksburg home was doubled in size by Friedrich William Grobe, who added a second floor in 1916 using concrete blocks from the local Basse Brothers Cement Yard. Grobe embodied the many-handed self-reliance of the Hill Country's German settlers—blacksmith, surveyor, farmer, and postmaster of nearby Rheingold. The mix of hand-cut stone and machine-made block captures a community moving into the industrial century.

York, PA · est. 2002

Built around 1741 by Martin Eichelberger in the earliest days of what would become York, the Golden Plough Tavern is a rare survivor of the medieval-style half-timber construction that German immigrants carried across the Atlantic. Its exposed timber framing, filled with masonry, reflects building traditions centuries old in the Rhineland but almost unknown in the English colonies. For generations it served travelers as a tavern along the colonial frontier of Pennsylvania.

Berkeley, CA

English immigrant John G. Wright founded the Golden Sheaf, Berkeley's first wholesale and retail bakery, in 1877; this 1905 annex was built to shelter its fleet of horse-drawn delivery wagons. Wright helped organize a bakers' union in 1904 and opened the building as a meeting place for temperance and women's suffrage advocates. After the 1906 earthquake the bakery turned out thousands of loaves for San Francisco's refugees before the business was sold to Wonder Bread in 1909.

Promontory, UT · est. 1957

Two railroads — one built east from California largely by Chinese laborers, the other west across the plains — joined rails at Promontory. The country could now be crossed in days instead of months.

Newport Beach, CA

Built in 1928 for $10,884, the Goldenrod Footbridge spans 243 feet across what was then called "Pacific Gulch," carrying residents and visitors down to the beach in early Newport Beach. In an era when Southern California's coastal towns were booming as seaside resorts, a graceful pedestrian span like this stitched together a growing community's neighborhoods and its shoreline. It endures as a beloved landmark of the interwar building era.

Esmeralda County, NV

After two decades of decline that drained a third of Nevada's population, the state's fortunes turned overnight with rich strikes at Tonopah and, in December 1902, here at Goldfield. Nevada-born prospectors Harry Stimler and Billy Marsh found gold ore, and from 1904 to 1918 Goldfield boomed into the state's largest city, peaking near 20,000 people with a railroad linking it to Las Vegas. Before the mines gave out, they yielded more than $86 million in precious metals.

Victoria, TX

Adolph Goldman, a German immigrant who reached Texas in 1859 and served in the Civil War, settled in Victoria in 1865 and built a wide-ranging business empire. From the late 1880s he ran a cotton gin at this site, expanding it with rail access, warehouses, and new equipment until it averaged 3,000 bales a season. His sons carried the operation forward until fire destroyed the facilities in the early 1940s.