Search Markers

Lott, TX

Organized on July 4, 1908, about 75 years after pioneers first opened the region, the Old Settlers Association of Falls County soon merged with the Willis L. Lang Camp of Confederate veterans, chartering a joint body in 1911 to honor pioneers and preserve Southern history. In 1912 it acquired a 17.9-acre reunion ground, and in 1936 relocated a historic log cabin there for pioneer memorabilia. A 1946 charter renamed it the Old Settlers and Veterans Association, opening its ranks to soldiers of later wars.

Pearland, TX

Settlement here followed the railroad's arrival in north Brazoria County in 1882; the townsite, first called Mark Belt, was platted in 1894 and renamed Pearland for its abundant pear orchards. Boosters advertised favorable farm conditions to lure settlers in the 1890s, though storms and freezes tested their resolve. The community cemetery began with the 1894 burial of pioneer Echolean C. Ackerly and grew into a record of early Pearland, its graves ranging from scraped earth to elaborately carved tombstones—six Civil War veterans among them.

Columbia City, IN

This monument is built from the very stones that Whitley County's pioneers once laid as the foundation of a residence — one of the first buildings raised in the fledgling town of Columbia. Rather than let those hand-set stones be lost, later residents gathered them into a lasting tribute to the first settlers. It is a memorial made literally from the county's earliest architecture.

McKinney, TX

This McKinney ground hosted its first Collin County Fair in 1858 and, but for the Civil War years, an annual fair thereafter — a showcase of livestock, handicrafts, and grandstand riding competitions where, it is said, Frank James once took first prize. From 1883 the Ex-Confederate and Old Settlers Picnic Association gathered across the road, drawing as many as 15,000 people a day in the 1910s and 1920s for speeches, races, and even balloon ascensions and air shows. The last picnic was held in 1941, when Collin County's final Confederate veterans had grown too old to attend.

Yorkville, WI

Organized in 1870, the Old Settlers Society of Racine County brought together the pioneers who had cleared farms and founded communities in southeastern Wisconsin a generation earlier. Such societies, common across the Midwest after the Civil War, gathered aging settlers to preserve the memory of frontier hardship and early community life. This monument marks their shared effort to record and honor that founding era.

Kennard, TX

John Hallmark, a signer of the 1837 petition that called Houston County into being, died just three years after reaching Texas and was buried by his wife on land the family occupied but did not own. His son George, also a signer, lies here too, along with six Confederate veterans and Shadrack 'Shade' Carlton, killed in action in France in August 1918. Long lost to the public in its remote woods, the cemetery is now recorded and cared for by descendants and volunteers.

Clarksville, TX

Established in 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, Old Shamrock Cemetery is among the earlier burial grounds near Clarksville in Red River County, one of Texas's oldest settled regions. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2001, it holds the graves of the antebellum pioneers who first farmed this North Texas country.

Hampshire County, WV

For generations, the country store was the beating heart of rural crossroads communities across the Appalachian backcountry, and Hampshire County — one of West Virginia's oldest counties — was no exception. A store like this one typically sold everything from flour and farm tools to cloth and coffee, extended credit to neighbors between harvests, and served as the place where people caught up on local news. When such a store also held the community's post office, as this one did, it became the official link between an isolated rural neighborhood and the wider nation, its counter doubling as the window where mail was sorted and letters were sent.

Sherman, TX

Sherman's subscription library of 1901 grew into a Carnegie-funded public institution, opening in 1915 in a simplified beaux-arts building designed by local architect John Tulloch. It served readers until 1973 and is notable for three interior murals completed in 1934.

Houston County, TX

Worship services were held on this ground as early as 1834, led by the aged pioneer preacher Stephen F. Box, and by about 1848 a log house here served as both church and school. A post office briefly operated in the late 1860s before the log building burned in 1869, after which services moved to the campground. A doctrinal split spawned a short-lived New Shiloh Church, and in 1880 William Calvert Hallmark, Box's son-in-law, willed the property to the congregation, which began its present building in 1883.

Gorman vicinity, TX

Named for its dwarf oaks, Shinoak Springs drew cattle, wildlife, and thirsty settlers before barbed wire closed the range in the 1880s. The town thrived until the M.K.&T. Railroad routed around it in 1880 — a fate shared by countless bypassed communities. Its rawhide-lumber schoolhouse, with split-log seats, doubled as a gathering place for political rallies and camp meetings that once drew thousands.

Smiley, TX

Old Smiley Lake drew settlers in the late 1840s to a natural lake, where ranching—cattle, sheep, and even racing horses—became the first commerce. George W. Colley, considered the community's founder, arrived in 1879 and built a steam-powered cotton gin and sawmill, and the settlement grew to include stores, a saddle factory, a newspaper, a school, and a post office. When the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad laid lines nearby in 1906, the town of Smiley picked up and moved a mile north to meet the rails.

Snyder, TX

This patch of former state land became a burial ground through common use in the 1880s, on the raw edge of West Texas settlement. Legend holds the first grave was that of a Native person, and many drifters and transients were laid here in unmarked plots. Closed to new burials in 1902, the graveyard saw many bodies removed elsewhere, leaving only fourteen identified graves today.

Boston, MA

This National Historic Landmark plaque honors Old South Church in Boston, whose congregation traces a long lineage in the city's civic and religious life. The present sanctuary, completed in 1875, is a celebrated example of Northern Italian Gothic architecture. The church's history connects to figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, and the enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley, and to the ferment surrounding the Boston Tea Party.

Boston, MA

This plaque designates the Old South Meeting House, built in 1729, as a National Historic Landmark. As Boston's largest colonial building, it hosted the fiery mass meetings that preceded the Revolution — most famously the gathering on December 16, 1773, from which colonists marched to dump British tea into the harbor. The designation was made under the Historic Sites Act of 1935.

Llano, TX

J. W. Owen had this stone hotel built around 1880 as a stagecoach stop, the work of local stonemasons including the noted builder J. K. Finlay. A third floor was added after 1883, along with an annex and a dining hall where family-style meals were served for decades. Known in its final years as the Colonial Inn, the business closed in the 1950s.

Nacogdoches, TX

The courthouse here rises over the Old Spanish Cemetery, used from 1800 to 1895 and resting place of Antonio Gil y Barbo, the founder of Nacogdoches. A towering figure of the late-eighteenth-century Spanish frontier, he served as militia captain, civil and military lieutenant, governor, and judge, and in 1783 published the town's first criminal code. His grave anchors one of the oldest continuously settled towns in Texas.

Mesquite, NV

Stretching 130 miles across what is now Clark County, the Old Spanish Trail became Nevada's first route of commerce in 1829, when trade opened between Santa Fe and Los Angeles. This rugged horse-and-pack trail later carried gold-rush "49ers" and Mormon pioneers westward. Concrete posts were placed to mark its course in 1965.

Las Vegas, NV

For decades before the railroads, a rugged pack-trail linked the Spanish outposts of Santa Fe and the growing settlement of Los Angeles, threading 130 miles across what is now Clark County. Opened to commerce in 1829, it carried woolen goods east and mules and horses west, becoming the region's first true artery of trade. Later the same path guided gold-seeking '49ers and Mormon emigrant wagons toward California. Concrete posts set in 1965 preserve the route's memory.

Kerrville, TX

The Old Spanish Trail threaded through the Hill Country from San Antonio past Bandera Pass, Camp Verde, and Kerrville, a route used for centuries by Comanches and Lipan Apaches. In 1732 Spanish forces under Juan Antonio Bustillo y Cebalos fought the Apaches at Bandera Pass, and over following decades soldiers, missionaries, and adventurers followed the trail toward the San Sabá country and its rumored silver. By the 1850s Camp Verde and Camp Ives anchored military patrols along the same ancient path.

Henderson, NV

On January 8, 1830, the merchant Antonio Armijo led the first pack train from Santa Fe through the Las Vegas Valley to Los Angeles, opening a trade link between the Mexican provinces of New Mexico and California. Some sixty men drove woolen goods west and returned east with herds of mules and horses along what became known as the Old Spanish Trail. Contemporaries called it the longest and most arduous pack-mule route in America, and it remained the principal path between the two territories until the Mexican War ended in 1848.

Clark County, NV

On the Old Spanish Trail, the fifty-five waterless miles between Las Vegas and the Muddy River earned the grim name Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of the Dead Man. Bleached bones and broken wagons marked the sandy crossing, which seasoned travelers made by night to spare their animals the desert sun. When John C. Frémont crossed in 1844, his party chewed cactus and sour dock for moisture until, near midnight, their thirsty mules bolted ahead toward the welcome water of the Muddy.

Clark County, NV

When Antonio Armijo pioneered the Old Spanish Trail in January 1830, the springs and lush meadows at Mountain Springs Pass offered rare relief for men and draft animals. Travelers needed two full days to reach the pass from Las Vegas, often breaking the journey at Cottonwood Springs and setting out early to climb over the summit by nightfall. The high country's water and grass made this one of the trail's most prized camping spots for generations of packers.

Voca, TX

Established in 1866, in the years just after the Civil War, this cemetery marks some of the earliest settlement of the Voca area in McCulloch County. It was designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2000. Its founding date places it among the pioneer burial grounds of the central Texas frontier.

Mexia, TX

Founded in 1838 around a spring donated by Moses Herrin, Old Springfield grew into the seat of newly formed Limestone County by 1846, complete with a two-story brick courthouse, a Methodist district that seeded the Northwest Texas Conference, and a short-lived college. The town's fortunes turned when the Houston & Texas Central Railroad passed it by in 1870, and two devastating fires in 1873 — one consuming the courthouse — hastened its end as buildings were carted off and the county seat moved to Groesbeck. Today only the old cemetery and Springfield Lake, inside Fort Parker State Park, carry the name of what was once the county's leading town.

Mexia, TX

Set aside as a ten-acre burial ground when Moses Herrin platted Springfield in January 1838, this cemetery served the once-thriving Limestone County seat and the surrounding frontier. Its oldest legible stone dates to 1849, and among those laid to rest are veterans of the Texas War for Independence, the Mexican War, and other conflicts, along with travelers who died far from home — including a New Yorker recorded as slain in 1854 violence over his gold. Long after the railroad bypassed Springfield in 1870 and fire hastened its decline, descendants kept returning to bury their dead beside pioneer forebears.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2014

In 1729, Jesuit priest Joseph Greaton established the earliest Catholic foundation in Pennsylvania, and by 1733 a church stood here in a colony that granted rare tolerance to Catholics. Greaton was for a time the only Catholic priest in Philadelphia. From this parish, Jesuits went on to found frontier missions in Adams and Berks counties and the first Catholic churches in New Jersey and Delaware.

Scott Township, PA · est. 2001

After the French and Indian War, veteran Maj. William Lea founded this congregation on his land grant, making it the oldest Episcopal church in southwestern Pennsylvania, with Francis Reno as first vicar. Its members included Gen. John Neville, the deeply unpopular federal tax collector whose office helped spark the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion that convulsed the surrounding country. A revival of interest in 1852 produced the stone church that stands today, home to an 1823 English pipe organ said to be the first carried over the Alleghenies.

Bayside, TX

Founded in 1857 by Joseph F. Smith, nephew of Texas' provisional governor, the town of St. Mary's was a thriving coastal community on the Gulf until an 1886 storm wrecked its homes and businesses and scattered its people. This ten-acre burial ground, with graves dating to 1860, holds pioneer settlers and war veterans and outlasted the town it once served, seeing renewed use after land development returned in 1909.

Fredericksburg, TX

Old St. Mary's traces to 1846 and the first German settlers of Fredericksburg, who replaced an earlier log church with this stone building, finished in 1863 under Rev. Peter Baunach. It served as the parish church until a larger sanctuary opened in 1906, then took on new life—including as a schoolhouse. Its steeple, pointed-arch windows, and stone buttresses make it a fine, early example of Hill Country Gothic.

San Antonio, TX

Four French-born brothers of the Society of Mary founded this college in frontier San Antonio in 1852, opening its doors in 1853 to more than a hundred students of all creeds. Over the following decades it grew into a large limestone complex — for a time the city's biggest — and educated many prominent South Texans, including eight San Antonio mayors. From 1934 to 1966 it housed St. Mary's University School of Law.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2013

Founded in 1763, Old St. Mary's rose in a colonial city where anti-Catholic feeling still ran strong, standing as proof of the unusual tolerance William Penn had written into Pennsylvania's founding. As the first Roman Catholic cathedral in the colony, it welcomed worshippers at a time when their faith was suspect elsewhere in America. During the Revolution, members of the Continental Congress attended services here, honoring Catholic France and Spain, whose aid proved vital to the fight for independence.

Corpus Christi, TX

When Father Bernard O'Reilly became St. Patrick's first resident pastor in 1853, the parish counted just nineteen families, and he oversaw construction of Corpus Christi's first Catholic church, a humble adobe building. A larger frame church with twin towers followed in 1882 and became a city landmark, elevated to cathedral status in 1912, until growth and fire damage led to the present Spanish Colonial cathedral dedicated in 1940.

Columbus, TX

Millionaire cattleman R. E. Stafford built this grand opera house in 1886, hiring famed Texas architect Nicholas Clayton to design an interior that seated a thousand beneath gas chandeliers and an elaborate hand-painted curtain. Its opening performance starred the celebrated Lillian Russell, and magician Harry Houdini later played its stage — audiences arriving on special trains from distant towns.

Medina, TX

This hill-country homesite sits on land once tied to surveyor John James and Confederate General John Bell Hood, in country so contested that raids delayed any building until 1878—just two years before the town of Medina took shape nearby. The Standard family has held the property since 1889, and it endures as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. Its story is one of persistence on a frontier where settlement waited on the easing of conflict.

Frankfort, KY

Kentucky's third capitol, built of Kentucky River marble in 1827-1829 after fire claimed its two predecessors, introduced the Greek Revival style to the state through architect Gideon Shryock, whose self-supporting circular stone stairway remains its marvel. To speed construction, penitentiary keeper Joel Scott invented a wire saw to cut the rough stone. It served as the seat of government for eighty years and witnessed history's turns — Daniel and Rebecca Boone lay in state here in 1845, Confederate forces captured it in 1862, and Gov. William Goebel was assassinated on its grounds in 1900.

McKean, PA · est. 1946

Before 1792, Pennsylvania's northern edge ran right across this ground, and the land above it belonged to no state's settled claim. That year Pennsylvania bought the wedge known as the Erie Triangle, paying just over $151,000 to gain a genuine harbor on the Great Lakes. Without that purchase, the state would have been boxed out of Lake Erie entirely.

Waterford Township, PA · est. 1946

This spot once sat on Pennsylvania's original northern boundary, the line that hemmed the state in before 1792. In that year the commonwealth paid more than $151,000 for the Erie Triangle, buying itself a foothold and a port on Lake Erie. The old line, long erased from maps, still crossed the highway here within living memory of the marker's makers.

Girard, PA · est. 1946

Here the highway crosses what was once the top of Pennsylvania, the northern boundary that stood before the state reached Lake Erie. In 1792 Pennsylvania purchased the Erie Triangle for over $151,000, extending its territory to the lakeshore and its all-important harbor. The transaction turned a landlocked corner into a gateway.

Springfield Township, PA · est. 1946

Before 1792 this was the literal edge of Pennsylvania, its northern line running across the road at this point. The state then bought the Erie Triangle for more than $151,000, gaining both the tract and the Lake Erie port that came with it. What had been a boundary became the middle of a growing commonwealth.

Wattsburg, PA

In the young republic's first decades, Pennsylvania's northern line ran right across this road—until 1792, when the state secured the wedge of land known as the Erie Triangle. That purchase, for which Pennsylvania paid the federal government the oddly precise sum of $151,640.25, gave the commonwealth something no other arrangement could: its own frontage on Lake Erie and a deep-water port at Presque Isle. This unassuming spot near Wattsburg marks where the old boundary once lay, before the map was redrawn to reach the Great Lakes.

DuBois, PA · est. 1955

Opened to the Allegheny River in 1804, the Old State Road was the first route to Pennsylvania's northwestern frontier, and in this section it traced the course of the older Chinklacamoose Path used by Native travelers. During the War of 1812 it carried troops under Major McClellan toward the fighting at Erie. Where the modern highway crosses here, it meets the line of that pioneering road.

Matamoras, PA · est. 1948

Around 1740, when the upper Delaware valley was a raw and contested frontier, Dutch settler Simon Westfael raised a sturdy stone house here that neighbors could flee to when violence flared. Structures like this doubled as homes and fortifications in an era when European farming families lived amid the tensions of frontier warfare. Local memory long called it the Old Stone Fort, or Fort Matamoras.

Nacogdoches, TX

Around 1788–91, civic and military leader Don Antonio Gil Y'Barbo built a stone house at the crossing of El Camino Real and La Calle del Norte, its walls quarried from local glauconite. Over the next century the building served as home, store, courthouse, jail, saloon, and fortress against filibustering raids, and Sam Houston opened his first Texas law office here in 1833. Demolished in 1902, its stones were reused for a faithful replica built in 1936 on the Stephen F. Austin campus.

Brady Township, PA · est. 1968

Built in 1822, this stone building served as a wayside inn for travelers crossing the young state's interior, offering rest and shelter along a frontier road. Such inns were vital hubs of early travel, where news, trade, and hospitality met at the day's end. Reconstructed in 1963, it recalls the era when overland journeys were slow and a roadside stop was a welcome sight.

Decatur, TX

Built around 1859 with prison labor, this was the first stone house in Decatur, its main floor a residence for the sheriff or deputy and its basement a jail—with meals lowered to prisoners by a dumbwaiter. The county sold it in 1888, and it later served as the city waterworks until 1938 before becoming a private home. In 1967 the Wise County Historical Society bought it for use as a museum.

Leavenworth, KS

This stone wall dates to 1827, the founding year of the military post that became Fort Leavenworth, and reflects the frontier fortifications raised in the earliest days of the U.S. Army's westward presence. Built during a period of tension between the government and Plains nations, it stands as a physical trace of the fort's origins on the edge of settled America.

San Marcos, TX

James Gray Storey (1830–1911) was one of Hays County's most active public servants, serving as district clerk, county judge, and state legislator, and commanding Company A of the 32nd Texas Cavalry during the Civil War. He was county clerk in 1890 when he and his wife Sarah built this home. The house was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1970.

Morton, TX

Spanning more than 33,000 acres, the Old Surratt Territory typified the open-range ranching that first settled the vast grasslands of the Texas Panhandle. Waco judge Marshall Surratt bought the land in 1885 but never lived there, leasing it to the Jumbo Cattle Company whose windmilled wells watered herds alongside famous outfits run by cattlemen like C. C. Slaughter and George Littlefield. As barbed wire and smaller family farms replaced the open range, the county's population surged from a mere handful in 1900 to nearly two thousand by 1930.

Chester, PA · est. 1954

This ground in Chester marks the site of the first St. Paul's Episcopal Church, built in 1702 in one of Pennsylvania's oldest settlements with roots in New Sweden. Just south lies the grave of John Morton, the Pennsylvania delegate whose vote helped tip the colony toward independence and who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Sweet Home, TX

Settled in the mid-1800s along the old Spanish trail between Houston and San Antonio, Sweet Home grew into a thriving trading and stagecoach stop after a post office opened in 1852. During the Civil War it sheltered Confederate winter camps and freight wagons hauling supplies toward Brownsville, and afterward it became ranching country, with cattleman George West and an influx of Czech and German immigrants. When the railroad laid tracks five miles south in 1887, businesses relocated and the original townsite faded into a cemetery and a few scattered remnants.

Boys Ranch, TX

Just northeast of here sprawled Old Tascosa, the self-styled cowboy capital of the Texas Panhandle. An easy crossing of the Canadian River made it a trading spot long before permanent settlement, and after the buffalo vanished, sheepherders, then cattlemen like Charles Goodnight, poured in during 1876. Isolated hundreds of miles from other towns, Tascosa drew gunmen and lawmen alike and buried its dead in its own Boot Hill—until barbed wire, the giant XIT Ranch, and a bypassing railroad choked off the open range and left it a ghost town.

Bandera, TX

This winding hundred-mile road from San Antonio to Kerrville served through the 19th century as a strategic patrol route for the Texas Rangers guarding the frontier. Bandera sat midway along the trail near Bandera Pass, a notorious ambush spot, making the town a focal point for Ranger activity. The route's most famous clash came in 1841, when Captain 'Jack' Hays and forty Rangers were ambushed by a large Comanche force in the pass and fought a desperate, close-quarters battle.

Miles, TX

Sheep rancher and civic leader Joe Thiele built this native-stone building in 1904 from rock dug at nearby Willow Creek. Its ground floor held the Runnels County National Bank while the upstairs Miles Opera House served as the town's social and cultural heart, hosting road shows, political rallies, and wrestling matches. Over the years the versatile structure also housed a school, stores, a post office, and a hotel run by later owners as the Hotel Miles.

Burnet, TX

Rancher Frank Thomas built a log home and a spring house—used to keep milk cool—on this site in 1864. Between 1880 and 1882 he added the present rock house of local limestone, quarried three miles away and designed to catch the Hill Country breeze. Fire destroyed the original log house in 1910, leaving the sturdy stone dwelling as the surviving record of a pioneer ranching family.

Denison, TX

Built in 1830 of white oak logs near Preston Bend, a key crossing on the Red River, the Thompson home is counted the oldest house in Grayson County and once held the county's first post office. Its builder, James G. Thompson, served as the county's first chief justice and founded a line of local business and civic leaders. Craftsmanship survives in its walnut chair rails and pegged Salem "cross and Bible" doors; it was moved from the future site of Lake Texoma and restored in 1950.

Indianola, TX

On a ridge above Indianola Beach lies one of the burial grounds that served the bustling Gulf port of Indianola, a rival to Galveston before hurricanes wiped it off the map. Its oldest legible stone dates to 1851, and among those laid to rest here were German immigrants who arrived in the great migration of the 1840s. One grave belonged to Angelina Eberly, remembered as the heroine of the Texas Archives War, though storms and vandalism have since erased her marker and many others.

Snyder, TX

Camp Springs took its name from W. H. Camp, who dug in beside the springs in 1878, but the land's human story ran far deeper, with pictographs and campsites left by Indigenous people who sheltered in nearby caves. The great California emigrant trail blazed by Captain R. B. Marcy in 1849 passed through this country, and in 1856 Robert E. Lee followed part of that same route while patrolling for Comanches. A post office opened in 1891 as the settlement took hold.

Van Alstyne, TX

Elijah Cannon founded this Grayson County settlement in 1852, arriving from South Carolina with his children and enslaved workers to develop 700 acres. The community built a church, cotton gin, grist mill, and wagon factory and by 1885 had an academy and 400 residents—but when the Houston & Texas Central Railroad bypassed it, the town swiftly faded in the 1890s.

Karnack, TX

This region was the ancestral home of the Caddo people before it became one of the most contested corners of the 19th-century frontier — part of the lawless "neutral ground" from 1819, where settlers famously refused to pay taxes to any authority. Founded on Caddo Lake in 1838, Port Caddo boomed into a rowdy river port of gamblers and boat crews, and its residents plunged into the violent Regulator-Moderator War of 1840–44. It thrived to some 500 people after Texas joined the Union, then withered as rival towns, a falling lake, and the railroad passed it by.