Search Markers

Lexington, MO

Dedicated in 1925, this memorial rose in Lexington, seat of Lafayette County, in the years after World War I, when communities across America erected monuments to honor the local men who had served in the Great War. As the decades passed, later generations added the names and conflicts of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, turning a single war memorial into a running record of the county's twentieth-century sacrifice. Lexington itself was already steeped in military history, having been the site of an 1861 Civil War battle, giving this ground a long memory of conflict.

Fayetteville, NC

In 1825, during his triumphant farewell tour of the United States, the Marquis de Lafayette visited Fayetteville, the city that had honored him by taking his name in 1783. He stayed at the home of Duncan McRae, which stood where the present courthouse now stands. The visit joined a Revolutionary hero to the first American town named in his honor.

New Orleans, LA

Laid out in 1788 as the public square of Faubourg Ste. Marie, New Orleans' first suburb, this green honors the Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman who fought for American independence. He declined an offer to become the first governor of the Louisiana territory the United States had just purchased, but on his triumphal 1825 tour he was met here with cries of 'Vive Lafayette!' A French-American society dedicated the marker in 1985.

Easton, PA · est. 2015

First contested in 1884 on the Lafayette College campus in Easton, the football game between Lafayette and Lehigh grew into a fierce cross-valley tradition. The two schools have met more than 150 times, and the NCAA recognizes their series as the most-played rivalry in college football. The matchup has drawn coverage from Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, and ESPN.

Lafayette, LA

This great live oak had already stood for roughly three centuries by 1800, when the surrounding land was given to the Catholic Church in the young settlement that would become Lafayette. Its estimated age of nearly 500 years means it took root long before French and Spanish colonists reached the bayou country of south Louisiana, quietly outliving the empires that traded the region back and forth. Heritage live oaks like this one became gathering points and landmarks for the Acadian and Creole communities who settled Acadiana.

Clinton, CT

In 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette — the French nobleman who had fought beside Washington a half-century earlier — returned to the United States as the 'Nation's Guest,' invited to tour the young republic he had helped create. Now an old man, he journeyed through all twenty-four states to rapturous crowds, and on August 21, 1824, that triumphal progress carried him along the old Post Road through this stretch of the Connecticut shore, then part of Killingworth. The town of Clinton would later be set off from Killingworth, but the memory of the day the Revolution's last great hero passed through, greeted with militia salutes and civic ceremony, stayed with the community.

Salem, MA

In 1824 the Marquis de Lafayette—the French aristocrat who had fought as a young major general in the Continental Army—returned to the United States for a 13-month triumphal tour as the nation's honored "Guest of the Nation." As he made his way through New England, towns competed to fete the last surviving general officer of the Revolution, and Salem was no exception, its citizens turning out in throngs to welcome him before he dined and pressed on to the next town up the coast. His arrival came as the republic neared its 50th birthday, drawing crowds of aging veterans and their children eager to glimpse a living link to the founding generation.

Sturbridge, MA

In 1824, a half-century after the Revolution he had helped win, the Marquis de Lafayette returned to America for a grand farewell tour and was greeted as a living link to the nation's founding. Traveling overland from Boston toward Hartford in early September, the aging general passed through Sturbridge, where townspeople escorted him to the Common and feted him at Porter's Stage House. Such welcomes—militia escorts, banquets, and cheering crowds at every town along the post road—were repeated in hundreds of communities during his thirteen-month journey through all twenty-four states.

Murfreesboro, NC

On the night of February 26, 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette lodged at the Indian Queen Inn, which once stood two blocks north of this Murfreesboro marker. The aging Revolutionary War hero was then near the end of his grand tour of the United States, greeted by adoring crowds in nearly every town he passed. His journey rekindled national memory of the Revolution as its founding generation was passing away.

Galveston, TX

In 1817 the privateer Jean Lafitte established a fort and settlement on Galveston Island, using it as a base to prey on Gulf shipping. Here in February 1821 his men clashed with the Karankawa people in the Battle of the Three Trees. Ordered to leave by the United States government, Lafitte abandoned and burned the post later that year.

Lagarto, TX

Lagarto Cemetery traces its origin to the early 1870s, when an unknown traveler died at the home of storekeepers Samuel and Mary Beall and was buried on their land; in 1876 they formally deeded two acres for a community cemetery. Among those laid to rest here are Texas Ranger Charles Fusselman, killed in Presidio County in 1890, and John Pollan, a veteran of the Texas war for independence. Though the ranching town of Lagarto declined after the railroad bypassed it in 1887, descendants of its pioneers have kept the cemetery in use ever since.

Lagarto, TX

Lagarto College opened in 1884 with four teachers, the only college Live Oak County would ever have, promoted by townsfolk hoping to grow their community of 500. But when two railroads bypassed Lagarto, the once-prosperous town withered and the school closed in 1895. Its two-story building was hauled away to serve out its days as a ranch house.

Nordheim, TX

Born in Germany, H. W. Laging joined the great mid-century wave of German immigrants who settled the Texas Hill Country and coastal plains, arriving in 1860 and marrying a fellow German settler. He took up arms for the Confederacy in a Texas infantry unit, then returned to build a successful life as a farmer and businessman. Beloved as "Papa Laging," he lived on as the last surviving Confederate veteran of his community, a bridge between the German immigrant experience and the Civil War generation.

Hallsville, TX

Jacob LaGrone, a pioneer who settled here in 1837 as a citizen of the Republic of Texas, gave his name to this chapel, built about 1866 from timber sawed at Harleton's Mill and hand-dressed on site under T. B. McFarland's supervision with donated neighbor labor. The property was deeded to the Methodist denomination in 1870 by David McKinney, who had purchased land from LaGrone's estate.

Austin, TX

Laguna Gloria is a Mediterranean-style villa built in 1916 for Henry and Clara Driscoll Sevier on a lagoon off the Colorado River, complete with a decorative window modeled on San Antonio's San José Mission. Its greater fame flows from Clara Driscoll, the philanthropist celebrated as the "Savior of the Alamo" for her efforts to preserve that shrine, who in 1943 gave the property to the Texas Fine Arts Association. Her lakeside home became an art museum, extending her legacy of cultural stewardship.

Linn, TX

Macedonio Vela settled this stretch of brush country in 1867 and turned more than 4,000 acres into the flourishing Laguna Seca ("Dry Lake") Ranch, which eventually swelled to 80,000 acres. In 1871 his daughter Carlota planted the first orange trees in Hidalgo County from seeds a traveling priest had given her—an early spark for what became a major citrus region. A school, post office, and Catholic church soon followed, and the ranch remains in Vela hands generations later.

Churchill County, NV

Completed in 1915, Lahontan Dam is the centerpiece of the Newlands Project, which transformed the Lahontan Valley into one of Nevada's most productive farming and ranching regions and supplied electricity to Churchill County. The project was among the first authorized under the federal Reclamation Act of 1902, and its 1903 contract for Derby Dam and the Truckee Canal was the U.S. Reclamation Service's very first. Originally the Truckee-Carson Project, it was renamed in 1919 for Senator Francis G. Newlands, a champion of federal reclamation.

Lajitas, TX

Set beside a Rio Grande ford that people crossed for millennia, the Lajitas cemetery gathers the varied history of the Big Bend borderland into one flagstone-walled ground. Comanche and Apache raiders followed the crossing into Mexico, Spanish expeditions scouted it for a presidio in the 1740s, and one of the Army's experimental camel expeditions paused here in 1860. After rancher H. W. McGuirk opened a trading post in 1899 and troops manned the crossing in the 1910s, a small settlement grew—and its Hispanic and Anglo dead were laid to rest here in barrows and niche-topped grutas.

Runaway Bay (Bridgeport), TX

After the United States entered World War II in 1941, Lake Bridgeport became an ideal, sparsely populated site for military training, serving as a bombing target range and auxiliary seaplane base for Eagle Mountain Lake Marine Corps Air Station. Beginning in 1942, crews built an administration building, seaplane ramp, and stone and floating targets, and hundreds of Navy and Marine aviators trained here in strafing, dive-bombing, glider work, and tests of the early TDR radio-controlled assault drone. Training took lives, too — two Marine aviators and a local guard died in accidents in 1944.

Fairfield, TX

Pioneers Simeon and Nancy Lake and their seven children settled here in the mid-1850s, clearing land and farming, and around 1856 a small church on their property gave rise to the Lake Chapel community. A schoolhouse and a two-acre burial ground soon followed; the earliest recorded grave is that of an infant granddaughter who died in 1874. Though the church and school were later moved, the cemetery grew over the years, holding members of the Lake and other pioneer families alongside veterans of the Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam.

Kennard, TX

After emancipation, freed African Americans built the Durden and Lake Creek communities here, at first burying their dead on family farms. In 1906 Malissa Scurlock and her sons Dan and George gave three acres for a shared burial ground, where the first interments were two infants of the McCelvey and Berry families. A cemetery association organized in 1910 under longtime officers Hayne David and Beatrice Murphy, and the ground remains an active, cherished link to those founding families.

Scotland, TX

In the late 1800s this part of Archer County was open range, opened to settlers only after the U.S. government forced Native American tribes onto reservations in Indian Territory. Homesteaders and ranchers clashed over the land even as the county organized in 1880, and around 1900 the McDonald family buried a visiting relative—remembered only as Grandma Crisp—in what became the Lake Creek community cemetery. Deeded to the county in 1908 and later cared for by a descendants' association, it holds generations of area residents and military veterans.

Montgomery, TX

Long before Stephen F. Austin's colonists arrived, the Coushatta people traveled the Coushatta Trace, a trade road running from Louisiana into Texas across these lands. Settled beginning around 1831 within Austin's second colony, the Lake Creek Settlement became the earliest known Anglo-American community in what is now Montgomery County. In 1835 W.W. Shepperd opened the area's first store, and from it in 1837 he founded the town of Montgomery; a number of Lake Creek settlers, including John Marshall Wade of the 'Twin Sisters' cannons, fought in the Texas Revolution.

Bayside, WI

These stone lion gates once marked the entrance to a country estate associated with Fred Usinger, whose name is tied to Milwaukee's celebrated German sausage-making tradition. The inscription's reference to 'Country Life in Donges Bay, 1880–1911' recalls the Gilded Age fashion among prosperous city families for rural retreats along Lake Michigan's shore. The gates are a surviving fragment of that vanished world of lakeside estates north of the city.

Lake Forest, CA

Dedicated in 2021, this Lake Forest memorial honors all who have served in the nation's armed forces — past, present, and future — without singling out any one conflict. It joins a long American tradition of community monuments to military service and sacrifice.

Iola, TX

In 1874 law partners Ben Goodrich and H. H. Boone—the latter a Texas Attorney General—donated four acres to the Methodist Episcopal Church for the scattered farm community of Lake Grove. Residents quickly raised a building used for both worship and schooling, and by 1900 a hundred students attended the Lake Grove School. The still-active cemetery, with stones dating to 1874, holds the grave of a Civil War veteran.

Dallas, TX

Lake Highlands Elementary opened in 1955 amid the postwar suburban boom that swelled the Richardson School District, its six rooms soon doubled to keep up with growth. The marker frankly records the era's segregation: before 1955 local Black children attended the separate Little Egypt School, and Richardson's schools stayed segregated until 1965, the same year a new campus for African-American students rose in Hamilton Park. Lake Highlands also became a mid-century innovator, among the first schools in the nation to teach by television in 1960.

Bearinger Township, MI

This marker recalls the European discovery of Lake Huron, which French explorer Samuel de Champlain reached in 1615 by following the Ottawa River route to what the French called the "Freshwater Sea." One of the largest lakes on earth, Huron was the first of the Great Lakes seen by Europeans, though it would take the French another half-century to grasp the true scale of the inland seas.

Ames, IA

This marker records the 1916 gift of Lake LaVerne to Iowa State College by Dr. LaVerne W. Noyes, an 1872 alumnus who made his fortune as a manufacturer and inventor before becoming a noted philanthropist. Noyes's benefactions to his alma mater reflect the Gilded Age and Progressive-era tradition of successful industrialists endowing the universities that shaped them.

Granite Shoals, TX

Impounded behind the Alvin J. Wirtz Dam beginning in 1949, this Highland Lakes reservoir was renamed in 1965 to honor Lyndon B. Johnson, the Hill Country native whose work in Congress advanced the flood-control, water-conservation, and low-cost power projects of the Lower Colorado River Authority. Johnson kept a home nearby and often returned to relax near his ranch and boyhood home.

Reno, NV

Built in 1877 by Washington J. Marsh, this handsome mansion was the home of Myron C. Lake, the toll-bridge and hotel keeper whose landholdings on the Truckee River gave rise to the city of Reno. Lake shrewdly donated land to the Central Pacific Railroad to ensure a townsite depot, and the settlement that grew around it made his fortune. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Hyde County, NC

Mattamuskeet, the largest natural lake in North Carolina, has drawn people to its shallow waters for centuries. In 1715 it became the center of an Indian reservation for the region's Native people, and in later eras ambitious schemes twice drained the lake to farm its rich bottomland. Since 1934 the lake and its marshes, a mile to the north, have been protected as a national wildlife refuge.

Vernon Hills, IL

During World War II, the U.S. Navy did something almost unimaginable: it turned the freshwater expanse of Lake Michigan into a carrier-flight-training ground, safely inland and beyond the reach of enemy submarines. Two former Great Lakes excursion steamers were rebuilt with flat wooden flight decks as the training carriers USS Wolverine and USS Sabre, operating out of the Chicago area. Thousands of naval aviators made their first carrier takeoffs and landings on these paddle-wheel carriers before shipping out to the Pacific—among them a young pilot named George H.W. Bush.

Cleburne, TX

Cleburne, the Johnson County seat, took its name from Patrick Cleburne, the Confederate general who led Texas troops in the Civil War. In the early 1960s the growing city approved a multimillion-dollar bond to dam its water supply, and by 1964 a 2,000-acre reservoir bearing the general's name stood ready to serve the community. The lake and its treatment plant reflect the postwar boom in municipal infrastructure across Texas.

Temple, TX

When the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad founded Temple, it dammed nearby Bird Creek to secure water for its trains — and the resulting reservoir soon doubled as a recreation ground. By 1900 investors had built a park honoring railroad manager L.J. Polk, where townsfolk paid a dime to boat, fish, and play croquet and tennis. Over the decades the retreat passed from private association to private club and finally to a city park.

St. Tammany Parish, LA

When its first span opened in August 1956, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway stretched nearly 24 miles across open water, and a second span followed in May 1969 to handle growing traffic. Carried on more than 9,000 concrete pilings, it pioneered large-scale use of prefabricated, prestressed concrete bridge construction in the United States. The crossing knit the lake's north shore into the Greater New Orleans area.

St. Tammany Parish, LA · est. 2013

The original 1956 span, designed by Palmer & Baker and now carrying southbound traffic, opened as the longest bridge in the world by more than 15 miles. Built in just fourteen months, it used assembly-line, mass-production methods for the first time in bridge construction — identical hollow pilings, caps, and pre-stressed deck sections cast onshore and barged into place. Engineering News-Record hailed the project as a bold venture of unusual foresight and resourcefulness.

Hudson, MI

Built in 1871–72 from Berea, Ohio sandstone, this bridge carried the main line of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway over Bean Creek near Hudson, Michigan. By 1892 it was one of only twenty-two stone bridges among 223 along more than 1,400 miles of that railroad's line—making its masonry construction a notable rarity. It stands as a durable relic of the railroad age that knit the Midwest together.

Mandeville, LA

On the Mandeville lakefront, this site marks the Lake Shore Hotel, which served as a Soldiers' Home between 1854 and 1868. Spanning the Civil War years, it sheltered soldiers along Lake Pontchartrain during one of the most turbulent chapters in Louisiana's history.

Somerville, TX

For decades Yegua Creek was a menace, flooding 43 times in the 46 years before 1958 and destroying lives and crops. On September 22, 1962, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson turned the first shovel of earth for Somerville Dam, a flood-control project completed in 1967 that created Lake Somerville. It stands among the mid-century public works that tamed Texas rivers and reshaped rural life.

Lake Stevens, WA

This memorial in the Snohomish County town of Lake Stevens honors local servicemembers who died in the armed forces, asking that their sacrifice never be forgotten. It speaks not to a single conflict but to the enduring toll of military service on a Pacific Northwest community. Such memorials anchor remembrance in the everyday landscape of the towns the fallen came from.

West Tawakoni, TX

Completed in 1960, Lake Tawakoni is among the largest reservoirs lying wholly within Texas, spreading across some 36,700 acres behind a 5.5-mile Iron Bridge dam on the Sabine River. Built and owned by the Sabine River Authority and financed through a water-supply contract with Dallas, it was engineered to slake the thirst of a growing region. During its creation, prehistoric animal bones and remains of a Tawakoni Indian village were unearthed, recalling the Native people whose name the lake carries.

Denison, TX

Completed in 1944, Lake Texoma was formed when Denison Dam impounded the Red River, creating one of the largest reservoirs in the nation for flood control, power, and recreation. Its creation was championed by Congressman Sam Rayburn, the long-serving Speaker of the House, and it flooded historic sites including Preston, once the Red River crossing of the Butterfield Stage. Straddling Texas and Oklahoma, it drew millions of visitors and gave its name to a nearby state park honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Quitaque, TX

Stone tools found on the shores of Lake Theo in 1965 and 1972 led to 1974 excavations that uncovered a campsite and bison-butchering ground used by Folsom people between roughly 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. Buried four feet deep were projectile points, scrapers, and more than 500 bones from an extinct form of bison. Spring-fed ponds in the now-submerged Holmes Canyon likely drew both the great herds and the hunters who followed them.

Burnet, TX

Chartered in December 1909 and sponsored by the nearby Robert E. Lee Lodge, Lake Victor Lodge No. 1011 held its first meeting on New Year's Day 1910 in a rented building. The Masons erected their own hall on this site in 1914 and continued meeting there through the 20th century, reaching their peak membership in the mid-1950s. In keeping with Masonic custom, the lodge has long supported charitable causes.

Port Arthur, TX

When the Port Arthur Townsite Company laid out the new Gulf Coast city in 1898, it reserved this shoreline park along Sabine Lake. Renamed in part for the Lions Club in 1920, the grounds gained playground equipment, fountains, landscaping, and a two-story colonial-style bandstand that became the hub of community life. Its stage drew campaigning politicians—including future governors Allan Shivers and W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel with his Light Crust Doughboys band—before the park passed to Lamar University in 1989.

Eagle Lake, TX

Texas sugar-making, born before the Civil War, roared back to life around 1900 thanks to cheaper refining methods and the drive of Colorado County planter William Dunovant. He and his partners built the Cane Belt Railroad to haul cane, then erected this refinery about 1902; at its height it processed up to 1,000 tons of cane a day and turned out five million pounds of refined sugar a year. A little train nicknamed the "Whangdoodle" fed the mill from surrounding fields. But after a peak season in 1908–09, tropical storms, an early freeze, and a new law banning convict labor broke the industry, and the plant was dismantled in 1918 and shipped off to Jamaica.

Carson City, NV

By 1863 two hotels and their stables stood here, and in 1872 one became a station on the newly finished Virginia & Truckee Railroad between Carson City and Reno. Beneath the highway run three inverted-siphon pipelines of the Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company, whose 76-mile box-flume and pipeline system — begun in 1873 to carry Sierra water to the Comstock — became world-famous engineering. From 1881 Lakeview also served as a lumber storage yard, fed after 1887 by a V-flume and shipped by rail to the mines until activity ceased in 1896.

Petersburg, TX

Lakeview School grew from two pioneer schoolhouses — Ivey, opened in 1892, and Star, opened in 1904 — that were physically hauled together onto this site in 1914 and joined into one building. A town soon gathered around it, boasting two churches, a gin, stores, and a garage at its 1920s–30s peak. When the school closed in 1943 the community faded, leaving only a church and a foundation on the plains.

Mirando City, TX

Born near San Luis Potosí, Mexico, in 1910, Eduarda "Lala" Banda immigrated with her family and grew up in the oil boomtown of Mirando City. Widowed young with two children, she supported them by cooking for local families, mastering a wide range of dishes. On the last day of 1953 she opened Lala's Café in a small four-room house, and its handmade tortillas drew customers from miles around — including airmen from Laredo Air Force Base — earning notice in newspapers and Texas Monthly.

Greenville, TX

When her husband, the county clerk, died in 1902, Lallie P. Carlisle was appointed by the Commissioners' Court to finish his term — becoming the first woman in Texas to hold an elective public office. Remarkably, she did so at a time when women in Texas could not yet vote, and the state Attorney General had to affirm that her appointment was valid.

Crosbyton, TX

This site first held the Crosbyton Inn, a two-story frame hotel built in 1908 by the C.B. Livestock Company to lure land buyers and promote the region for cotton farming. A magnet for travelers on the South Plains, it was rebuilt over its original basement after an early fire and finally razed in the 1920s. In 1926 a brick office and apartment block rose in its place, later bought and renamed for W. P. Lamar in 1944.

Fulton, TX

This burial ground served the pioneers of Lamar, the coastal town founded by Irish-born Texas Revolution veteran James W. Byrne, who named it for his friend Mirabeau B. Lamar, president of the Republic of Texas. Its earliest grave belongs to Patrick O'Connor, a bookkeeper who had worked for Byrne in New Orleans. After the town of Lamar vanished by 1915, the neglected cemetery was rescued and restored in the 1940s.

Paris, TX

Carved from Red River County in 1840 and organized the following year, Lamar County honors Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas and a champion of public education remembered as the 'Father of Texas education.' The county seat wandered in its early years — from Lafayette to Mount Vernon before settling at Paris, a town first known by the homely name Pinhook.

Paris, TX

The great fire of March 1916 gutted Lamar County's massive 1897 Romanesque courthouse, once believed indestructible. Within weeks the commissioners hired local builders alongside the Fort Worth firm of Sanguinet & Staats, and by late 1917 a new fireproof concrete courthouse rose on the old foundation, sheathed in rough pink granite salvaged from the ruins. Its Classical design — corner pavilions, engaged columns, terra-cotta eagles, and triple-arched entries — anchored a downtown rebuilt in modern form.

Paris, TX

In 1911 five Paris businessmen each put up a hundred dollars to launch the Lamar County Fair Association, borrowing land from Henry Clement to raise the first fair buildings. The grounds proved more than a showplace for prize livestock and produce—after a devastating fire swept Paris in 1916, the fair became an emergency relief camp for the displaced. The 1921 coliseum, designed by architect J. L. Wees, went on to host decades of community gatherings.

Paris, TX

Lamar County sat on the uneasy northern edge of Texas during the Civil War, a farming and transport hub near the Red River and Indian Territory. Notably, its delegation cast the only unanimous vote against secession at the state convention, and county voters likewise opposed it—yet once war came, the county raised at least nine combat companies, including the 9th Texas Infantry that bled at Shiloh and later served in Hood's Texas Brigade. Local men rose to Confederate general's rank, and cattleman John Chisum supplied beef to the armies.

Crosbyton, TX

In 1892 young William Percy Lamar came with his parents from Tarrant County to a 160-acre homestead in Crosby County, and after marrying Sarah Elzina Henson in 1912 the couple prospered through farming, dairying, stock raising, and business. In 1957 Elzina established the Percy and Zina Lamar Foundation, whose gifts built and sustained the county's pioneer museum and community center along with a Masonic hall and Methodist charities. The marker stands as a tribute to the family and to all West Texas pioneers.

McAllen, TX

Approved by the McAllen School Board in 1938 and funded through a bond election and the Public Works Administration, Lamar was built to architect Marion Lee Waller's clever pre-air-conditioning design—an L-shaped plan one room deep, with classrooms opening onto breezeways for maximum airflow. It served as a high school for only five years before a new campus opened, after which it continued as a junior high. The Spanish Colonial Revival building features a buff-brick exterior, clay-tile roof, and cast-stone detailing.

Plainview, TX

Plainview's first schoolhouse, a half-dugout sod building, went up in 1887, the year the town was founded, and doubled as a community center where local churches were organized. A Masonic-built frame structure followed, briefly styled the Llano Estacado Institute, until fire destroyed it in 1902. The reorganized school was renamed for Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas and a champion of public education.