Search Markers

Boise, ID

Boise grew rapidly after 1863, when the discovery of gold in the nearby Boise Basin brought miners, merchants, and settlers to the new territorial capital. The Old Boise district preserves the brick commercial blocks that grew up around that boom, the city's original downtown core. This engraved stone marks the boundary of that surviving historic quarter.

Rusk, TX

Raised in 1865 by a New Orleans cotton promoter, this Rusk building soon housed the law office of S. A. Wilson, who helped codify Texas law under the 1876 constitution before rising to the state appeals bench. In the 1880s attorney and Tyler banker F. W. Bonner opened Cherokee County's first bank here, serving the short-lived industrial boomtown of New Birmingham. The Bonner name stuck through later uses as a school and more.

Boone County, KY · est. 2008

Built in 1853 in the Greek Revival style, this is the oldest surviving government building in Boone County, Kentucky. It began at the corner of Washington and Jefferson Streets as the county clerk's office, was sold to the Boone County Deposit Bank in 1889, and later spent decades as Burlington's post office after a 1924 move. Relocated again in 2001 and rehabilitated by the county, its several journeys mirror the changing life of a small county seat.

Boone County, KY

A courthouse has stood on this Boone County site since 1799, and this third building — a Renaissance Revival design by Louisville's McDonald Brothers — was completed in 1889 for about $20,000. Its original clock tower proved too heavy and was removed in 1898, replaced by a cupola designed by the noted Cincinnati firm of Samuel Hannaford & Sons.

Walnut Creek, CA

Frank and Mary Borges built this ranchhouse in 1899 as the heart of a working cattle ranch in the hills above Walnut Creek. Five generations of the Borges family worked the land before the house was restored and reopened as a visitor center for a 2,600-acre open space preserve, and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.

Walnut Creek, CA

The Old Borges Ranchhouse anchored a working cattle ranch in the hills above Walnut Creek, built in 1899 by Francisco "Frank" Borges and his wife Mary with their children. In an era when the East Bay was still open range and grazing land, families like the Borgeses turned Spanish- and Mexican-era rancho country into productive American cattle operations. The house sheltered five generations of a hard-working ranching family before the land became a public open-space preserve.

Old Boston, TX

Boston began while this land was still part of Mexico, a store and mail stop serving the plantations along the Red River, and took its name from W. J. Boston, its first storekeeper. A battalion formed here to fight in the Texas Revolution, and in 1841 the town became the first seat of Bowie County, its square lined with stores and a two-story brick courthouse, and home to three private schools and even two future Texas governors. When the railroad bypassed it in 1877 and the county seat moved away, the once-thriving town faded into "Old" Boston.

Nye County, NV

This spot on the 37th parallel began as a line drawn on a national map: under the Compromise of 1850 it divided Utah and New Mexico territories organized from land Mexico ceded in 1848. When Nevada Territory was carved from western Utah in 1861, the parallel became its southern edge, holding firm through eastward enlargements in 1862 and 1866. A final act of Congress, ratified by Nevada's legislature on January 18, 1867, annexed the Arizona lands south to the Colorado River, fixing Nevada's borders as they stand today.

Lincoln County, NV

Here the 37th parallel served as a boundary first drawn under the Compromise of 1850, separating the Utah and New Mexico territories organized from land ceded by Mexico in 1848. As Nevada Territory emerged from western Utah in 1861, this line became its southern limit and survived the enlargements of 1862 and 1866. Congress and the Nevada legislature completed the picture on January 18, 1867, adding the Arizona lands south of the parallel to give the state its enduring shape.

Marquez, TX

Around 1860, settlers on the Texas prairie near Marquez raised a single building to serve double duty — a schoolhouse for the community's children and a meeting hall for its Masonic lodge. In a thinly settled frontier county, such a structure was the civic heart of the neighborhood, hosting lessons, lodge business, and gatherings under one roof. The tradition endured in the annual Father's Day reunion that still draws descendants back to the site.

Brandon, TX

In 1868, Dr. James T. Harrington built one of Hill County's earliest grist mills and founded the town of Brandon around it. Damming White Rock Creek for waterpower, the mill ground the corn meal that was the staple of every settler's table, serving a wide area for nearly half a century. In frontier Texas a dependable mill was the difference between a struggling camp and a thriving town—only stone foundations remain today.

Brazoria, TX

In 1827 the Mexican government granted Brazoria this ground as a Catholic cemetery—which in practice meant it was open to everyone, since all of Austin's colonists were, by law, counted as Catholics. Generations of the colony's pioneer families were laid to rest here until the burial ground filled by 1930 and a new cemetery opened. It remains a roll call of the Anglo-American settlers of Stephen F. Austin's colony.

Angleton, TX

When Angleton won the Brazoria County seat in 1896, it needed a proper seat of government, and this courthouse rose the following year from plans first drawn for a neighboring county. Growth prompted a major enlargement and remodeling in 1927, but a 1932 storm damaged the building and pushed the county to erect a replacement. County offices lingered here into the 1970s, leaving the old courthouse as a landmark of the town's early civic life.

Raleigh, NC

In 1863, by order of Governor Zebulon Vance, earthen breastworks were thrown up around Raleigh to guard the capital against Federal cavalry raids during the Civil War. The fortifications ringed the city as the tide of war turned against the Confederacy. Remnants of these earthworks survive a third of a mile to the west.

Harrisburg, PA · est. 1953

After Harrisburg became Pennsylvania's capital, the state needed a proper home for its government. Architect Stephen Hills designed and built the first State Capitol here between 1819 and 1821, and lawmakers first gathered inside on January 2, 1822. The dignified brick statehouse served the commonwealth for three-quarters of a century until fire destroyed it in February 1897.

San Augustine, TX

This 1914 depot stood on the Gulf & Interstate line organized by John Henry Kirby, one of the great Texas lumber barons, and took its name from the Brooke family who gave the land. For decades the depot was the beating heart of Brookeland, until construction of the Sam Rayburn Dam in 1960 forced the railroad to relocate and left the station surplus. Hauled 40 miles and lovingly converted into a farmhouse, it survives with its distinctive features preserved.

Round Rock, TX

Erected in 1876, this Victorian limestone building with its stepped parapet and keystone arches thrived in Round Rock's booming railroad era. From about 1887 to 1912 it housed the Round Rock Broom Company, whose brooms won a gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Over the years the versatile structure also served as a general store, furniture store, school, skating rink, and car repair shop before being preserved in 1969.

Bandera vicinity, TX

This ranch was settled in 1867 by former New Yorker Judge Edward M. Ross, a Mexican War veteran who had served in the 1850s at Camp Verde, the Army's nearby camel post. His hand-cut native-stone house passed to his daughter Kate, wife of Ebenezer Buck of a prominent pioneer family, who inherited it in 1901. In 1920 the Bucks turned the ranch into Bandera's first guest ranch, famed for its food and hospitality until their deaths in 1941.

Odessa, TX

This shallow depression is a surviving buffalo wallow, worn into the West Texas ground over untold years by bison rolling in the dirt to shed winter coats and drive off insects. Great herds once migrated across these plains between Canada and Mexico, sustaining the Plains Indians who followed them for food, clothing, and shelter. In the 1870s the herds were slaughtered en masse—encouraged by the army, settlers, and hide hunters—and had all but vanished by the time Odessa was founded in 1886.

Town of Huntington, NY

During the Revolutionary War, British-occupied Long Island suffered under harsh Loyalist rule, and Huntington's old burial ground became the scene of one of its most notorious indignities. In 1782, after the fighting had largely ended, the Loyalist officer Benjamin Thompson—the brilliant, opportunistic scientist later ennobled in Europe as Count Rumford—ordered a fort built directly atop this hill of graves. Soldiers reportedly tore up headstones to raise the earthworks, and the grim outpost earned the biblical name Fort Golgotha, the 'place of the skull.' The desecration outraged townspeople and became a lasting emblem of wartime occupation on Long Island.

Beaufort, NC

Deeded to the town of Beaufort in 1731 by Nathanael Taylor, this seaside cemetery holds generations of the coastal community's dead. Among them is Captain Otway Burns, a celebrated privateer of the War of 1812, alongside soldiers of the Revolution and the Civil War. Its weathered stones trace more than a century of American conflict and coastal life.

Calvert, TX

Founded around 1870 as one of Calvert's earliest industries, this foundry was built of locally made brick and fitted with an iron facade shipped from St. Louis. Ore hauled by horse-drawn wagon from nearby deposits and from Cherokee County, a hundred miles away, was forged here into farm tools and other durable goods, and the works drew investment from prominent Texas businessmen, including a member of the noted Adoue family.

Pecos, TX

Erected in 1929 by pioneer physician Jim Camp, this was the first permanent hospital in the vast Trans-Pecos region of far West Texas. "Dr. Jim," who arrived in Pecos in 1900 and once operated on kitchen tables for lack of equipment, spent decades pushing to build a modern facility and was named Texas Doctor of the Year in 1950. The building was converted to offices in 1954 and recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1966.

Mineral Wells, TX

Established in 1925 and named for National Guard general Jacob F. Wolters, this camp began as a summer training ground for horse-mounted cavalry, with Mineral Wells donating the first fifty acres. Through the 1930s a Civilian Conservation Corps company improved the grounds, and in 1940 the site was chosen as a major training base for the national draft. During World War II it swelled into an infantry replacement center holding nearly 25,000 troops, and it also housed German prisoners of war.

Decatur, TX

This spot recalls the lawless years after the Civil War, when outlaws like Jesse and Frank James kept a chain of hideouts across Texas from the Rio Grande to the Red River, stashing stolen horses until posses lost the trail. The era produced a rogues' gallery—Cole Younger, Belle Starr, John Wesley Hardin, Sam Bass and others—who robbed and killed and vanished into wild country. Order returned only after the Texas Rangers were reorganized in the 1870s and given broad arrest powers.

Capon Bridge, WV

Capon Bridge grew up where the road to the west crossed the Cacapon River in Hampshire County, one of the oldest corners of what is now West Virginia and a frontier settled by Scots-Irish and German families in the eighteenth century. A congregation like this old Christian Church would have been a cornerstone of that small mountain community — a place for worship, weddings, funerals, and the ordinary business of neighbors keeping faith together across generations. Churches bearing the plain 'Christian Church' name grew out of the Restoration Movement that swept the American frontier in the early 1800s, calling for a simple, unifying faith.

Capon Bridge, WV

Capon Bridge sits in the Cacapon River valley of Hampshire County, one of the oldest corners of what is now West Virginia and part of Virginia's colonial backcountry. Presbyterian congregations like this one followed the Scots-Irish and other settlers who pushed into these Appalachian valleys in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and the meetinghouse typically doubled as the community's spiritual and social anchor. An 'old' church of this kind marks generations of local worship, weddings, and burials in a rural crossroads that grew up around the river ford and bridge that gave the town its name.

New Braunfels, TX

Built around 1870 of adobe brick with cypress floors and doors, this New Braunfels home still keeps its original rolled-glass windows and a pane of ruby glass in the front door. Over the years it sheltered a succession of German-Texan families, including merchant Fritz Scholl, Judge Adolf Giesecke, and flour miller H. Dittlinger. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1968.

Abbott, TX

D. C. Carr established this ranch in 1854 on land straddling Hill and McLennan counties, part of the early growth he and his brother J. C. brought to the towns of Abbott and West after arriving in Texas in 1840. A log cabin on the property served triple duty as store, post office, and stagecoach station until 1881. The land still holds traces of an earlier Indian camp and burial mound near a cave formed along the Balcones Fault.

Rocksprings, TX

Built in 1920–21 by merchant G. M. Carson, this was the first stone store in Rocksprings, replacing his 1904 general store on the same spot—long the only place in the county selling caskets. The sturdy building survived the devastating 1927 tornado that killed 72 people in the town. More than a century on, it remains in the Carson family.

Vincennes, IN

This plaque records the 1976 placement of Vincennes' Old Cathedral and its complex on the National Register of Historic Places, done by the U.S. Department of the Interior with Indiana's Division of Historic Preservation. The designation recognizes one of the oldest and most storied Catholic sites in the old Northwest.

Vincennes, IN

This cemetery holds the mostly unmarked graves of some 4,000 early residents of Vincennes, among them Revolutionary soldiers who aided George Rogers Clark. On its ground stood the log church where townspeople swore allegiance to Virginia and the United States in 1778, and where in February 1779 Clark and British commander Henry Hamilton negotiated the surrender of nearby Fort Sackville.

Abbeville, LA

On July 25, 1843, Père Antoine Désiré Mégret — the French priest who founded Abbeville — purchased 160 arpents from Joseph LeBlanc to establish a church, rectory, and cemetery. LeBlanc himself was buried here in 1854, and the oldest marked grave belongs to Eufemie Broussard, who died in 1852. The ground holds the earliest generations of the town's Catholic community.

Wheelock, TX

The Cavitt homestead began as a log cabin raised in 1836, the year Texas won its independence, and grew into a fine hand-finished house completed in 1854. Standing on the road between Nacogdoches and San Antonio de Béxar, it served through the 1840s and 1850s as a stage stop. The Cavitts were political allies of Sam Houston, who was a frequent guest and gave a desk to Volney Cavitt.

Sherman, TX

Settled in 1848 by Grayson County pioneers who reclaimed land from wilderness amid Indian raids and frontier hardship, Old Cedar quickly needed a cemetery—still holding some 400 graves, including one Union and eighteen Confederate veterans. As the community took root it built Cedar Academy in 1871, where students learned to make ink and split goose-quills alongside their lessons, and organized the Cedar Methodist Church the same year. Camp-ground revivals under brush arbors drew families from miles around each summer.

Celina, TX

Founded near this spot in 1870 by settlers from Celina, Tennessee, the town of Celina left this cemetery behind when the community picked up and moved to the railroad around 1900. W. J. Bounds donated the land as a community burying ground after Elizabeth McWhorter's death in 1885, and its oldest grave holds a child who died in 1884. A cemetery association formed in 1918, and the grounds now hold some 600 graves.

Paris, TX

On land once owned by George Washington Wright, founder of Paris, this was the town's primary burial ground from 1845 to 1865, its oldest grave said to be that of a free Black man who worked for Wright. When the newer Evergreen Cemetery opened in 1866, many graves were moved, yet Wright himself was buried here in 1877, and a granite marker honors soldiers of the 9th Texas Infantry, C.S.A., who died in a measles epidemic in 1862. Of roughly 325 graves, about a hundred stones survive, most from 1870 to 1910.

San Patricio, TX

On a rise above San Patricio lies a burial ground older than the Anglo town, used by Indian peoples and Mexican settlers before empresarios John McMullen and James McGloin planted their Irish colony of San Patricio de Hibernia in 1830. The colonists kept using the old cemetery, and its graves record the turbulence of the Texas Revolution — Lt. Marcelino Garcia, killed at Lipantitlan in 1835, and soldiers who fell in the Battle of San Patricio in 1836. Empresario McGloin himself lies here in an unmarked grave, alongside settlers lost to scarlet fever, duels, and the ordinary attrition of frontier life.

San Patricio, TX

This hilltop cemetery is believed to have served Native peoples and Mexican settlers long before Anglo colonization reached the area. After Irish empresarios John McMullen and James McGloin founded San Patricio de Hibernia in 1830, the colonists kept burying their dead here, beneath wooden crosses and stones inscribed in Spanish and English. Among those laid to rest are Lt. Marcelino García, killed at the 1835 battle of Lipantitlán, and soldiers who fell at the battle of San Patricio in 1836.

Carthage, TX

Old Center Cemetery began in 1856 on land donated by community pioneer James Rowe, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence whose own 1868 grave is among its oldest. The earliest marked burial, that of Arminta C. Cash, dates to 1865, and the grounds hold some 400 marked graves alongside many unmarked ones. Descendants of the original donor have expanded its boundaries over the generations.

Pineland, TX

In one of Texas's oldest settled regions, the farming community of Centerview took root in the 1840s around a stagecoach stop, post office, store, church, and school. Its community cemetery holds a dozen or more unmarked graves alongside the oldest dated burial — an infant, Merle Taylor, laid to rest in 1899 — plus community leaders and veterans of every war from the Civil War through Vietnam. Wooden markers, curbed plots, and an arched entryway survive, tended each year by descendants.

Fredericksburg, TX

Swiss-born jeweler and watchmaker Alphons Walter raised this two-story building in the heart of Fredericksburg in 1905, then sold it in 1909 to civic leader Robert Striegler, who ran the Central Drugstore on the ground floor. A drugstore would occupy the site for more than 70 years, while the upper floor housed the town's telephone exchange, doctors' offices, and a photographer's studio.

Winchendon, MA

This plaque marks the resting place of Winchendon's earliest settlers, the families who cleared north-central Massachusetts' dense woodland into farmland in the decades before the town was formally incorporated in 1764. The first burial here in 1752 predates the Revolution, and the ground holds 34 veterans of the War for Independence — ordinary townspeople who left their fields to fight. Dedicated in 1976 during the nation's Bicentennial, the marker gathers a colonial frontier community and its Revolutionary generation into a single spot of remembrance.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 1953

In the mid-1700s Bethlehem was a tightly organized Moravian community, and this second place of worship served the congregation from 1751 to 1806. The Moravians were renowned for their sophisticated sacred music, and within these walls prominent leaders of the Revolutionary era heard hymns, chorales, and the Gospel preached by bishops such as Spangenberg and Ettwein. It was a spiritual and cultural center in a settlement that punched far above its size in the young nation's religious and musical life.

Fredericksburg, TX

German immigrants founded the Cherry Spring community around 1850, teaching their children in private homes until nobleman Wilhelm Marschall von Bieberstein deeded ten acres in 1859 to a group of settlers so they could build a proper schoolhouse. Classes filled the original part of this building from 1860 to 1878, after which it served the community as a place of worship — and in 1905 became the birthplace of Christ Lutheran Church. One modest stone building held the settlement's schooling and its faith.

La Vernia, TX

The Old Chihuahua Road ran from central Mexico to the Texas coast at Indianola, a cart route worn by traders, raiders, and newcomers alike. Alsatian, German, Polish, and Irish immigrants followed it inland seeking a fresh start, even as it doubled as a path for Indian raiding parties. After 1835 it carried gold and silver bound for export, and by the 1850s it served as a route for army travel.

Cuero, TX

On April 1, 1866, some 1,800 longhorns gathered by Crockett Cardwell moved out from near this DeWitt County site on the first great trail drive from the area to northern markets, with local man Thornton Chisholm as trail boss. The route joined the famous Chisholm Trail — marked in part by scout Jesse Chisholm — winding past Austin, Georgetown, and Red River Station into the Indian Territory. In the first postwar year alone, 260,000 Texas cattle went up the trail, and over three decades at least ten million followed, driven north by Texas cowboys in the greatest movement of livestock in history.

Alvin, TX

This was Alvin's first cemetery, acquired by the city in 1892, its oldest legible stone dating to 1889 over the grave of pioneer and Civil War veteran G. W. Durant. Many of the town's earliest settlers rest here, along with several victims of the devastating 1900 hurricane. The burial ground was renamed Oak Park in 1953.

Caldwell, TX

Laid out in 1840, the same year the town of Caldwell was platted, this burial ground was set aside as a "Grave Yard and Church lot" in the earliest days of the Republic of Texas. Town founder Lewis L. Chiles rests here, and its oldest legible stone, from 1843, marks Margarette A. King and her infant daughter. The cemetery is now maintained by the city.

La Grange, TX

In use for burials by 1840, this ground was deeded to trustees and then to La Grange after the city incorporated in 1854. On April 17, 1873, fourteen townswomen formed the Ladies' Cemetery Association of La Grange — probably the first such organization in Texas — with Mrs. L. W. Moore as its first president, and their association has cared for the cemetery ever since. An annual decoration day begun in 1874 still honors those buried here, among them pioneers who fought for Texas freedom.

Livingston, TX

This graveyard opened in 1840 with the burial of a four-year-old child of Moses Livingston Choate, a Kentucky pioneer who had received a Mexican land grant and founded the town he first called Springfield. After Polk County formed in 1846, Choate donated land for the county seat and renamed the town Livingston, setting aside a block that grew from a family plot into the community cemetery. Among its graves lie Republic of Texas citizens, Mexican War veterans, and dozens of Civil War soldiers.

Weatherford, TX

Formally established by Weatherford's town council in 1863, this cemetery gathered earlier burials that had been scattered in the town's unmarked streets. By the 1920s a civic league and cemetery association—led notably by its women members—had beautified and secured the neglected grounds. Among its estimated thousand graves rest Civil War Medal of Honor recipient Chester Bowen, famed trail drivers Oliver Loving and Bose Ikard, and Texas Governor S. W. T. Lanham.

Dallas, TX

The springs on this ground drew Native peoples long before a settler acquired the property in the 1840s, and the same water later helped make Dallas the crossing point of two major railroads in 1871 — the spark for the town's explosive growth. In 1876 the city set aside ten acres near the springs as its first public park, a leafy center of fountains, a zoo, and a wading pool that a heritage society would later reclaim as a museum of restored historic buildings.

Post, TX

This schoolhouse grew out of the utopian colony founded by cereal magnate C.W. Post on the West Texas plains. Built in 1908 as a commissary school and named for Post's son-in-law E.B. Close, it was moved to this site in 1910 and grew into an independent school district by 1918, gaining a second story in 1921. It survives as a token of Post's ambitious experiment in planned rural community.

Gilmer, TX

A ferry crossing on Big Cypress Bayou, Coffeeville grew into a bustling 1850s East Texas town with an academy, churches, stores, doctors, a hotel, and a Masonic lodge. During the Civil War it lived up to its name by selling coffee when scarcity emptied other towns' shelves. It also hosted one of Upshur County's three Confederate camps of instruction, established at local citizens' expense after Governor Edward Clark's 1861 call, where infantry and cavalry trained for the fight.

McKinney, TX

Collin County was carved from Fannin County in 1846 and named for Collin McKinney, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. After the county seat moved to a more central site donated by William and Margaret Davis, the growing town of McKinney replaced two wooden courthouses with this substantial stone building, completed in 1876 to a design by Sherman architect Charles Wheeler and celebrated with a grand ball. Enlarged in the 1920s and used as a courthouse until 1979, it endures as a symbol of the county's early growth.

West Columbia, TX

This burial ground was given from the grant of Josiah H. Bell, among the first land deeded to one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists. It holds the graves of many who fought in the Texas Revolution of 1836. Deeded to a Presbyterian congregation in 1852, it has been tended since 1933 by a cemetery association.

Burnet, TX

Built in 1873, this Victorian home boasted a large bay window, a solid walnut staircase, and three fireplaces, and though later remodeled it kept its original floor plan. In 1890 it was bought by Judge J.G. Cook, a noted lawyer, and stayed in the Cook family for generations. It stands as a fine example of the substantial homes prominent citizens built in early Burnet.

Lampasas, TX

Built in 1861 of native white stone with lumber hauled in by wagon, the Old Cook Home stands near the county's first cemetery in early Lampasas. Its sturdy stonework reflects the self-reliant building methods of settlers on the Texas frontier.

Comanche, TX

Soon after Comanche County was created in 1856, the town of Cora was platted as its seat, and a tiny squared-log building barely twelve feet on a side served as its courthouse. When the county seat moved to Comanche in 1859, Cora withered, and the little courthouse was folded into a house around 1880 and shuffled from place to place over the years. It endures as the last trace of a vanished town and of the rough-hewn architecture of early Texas government.