Search Markers

Sherman, TX

Thomas Randolph arrived in Grayson County as a boy in 1859 and, groomed for business, joined the Merchants and Planters Bank at nineteen. Rising to president in 1886, he led the bank for more than three decades, using its influence to draw new industry to Sherman and to help found the city's first hospital. Though he also chaired a St. Louis bank's board, Sherman remained his home until his death in 1918.

Canadian, TX

Tom T. McGee came to the Panhandle around 1884 and was working as a ranch foreman when he was elected the first sheriff of Hemphill County in 1887, the year Canadian was founded. In November 1894 he was mortally wounded in a gunfight defending a large money shipment against six armed men at the Wells, Fargo & Co. office. In a poignant coda, his widow later volunteered in England during World War I and died there, her ashes returned home for burial.

Harris Township, PA

Pennsylvania's Mid State Trail runs for well over a hundred miles along the ridges and valleys of the state's central highlands, and this footpath honors the man who dreamed it into being. Tom Thwaites, a longtime advocate for hiking and the outdoors, laid out and championed the route in the later twentieth century, then rallied an army of volunteers to clear, blaze, and maintain it. The dedication captures a quieter kind of history: not a battle or a statesman, but the patient, unpaid labor that stitches a wilderness path across a whole state.

Tyler, TX

Tomas G. Pollard was a Tyler attorney and lawmaker whose career reshaped life for East Texans. Elected a state representative while still in college and a state senator in 1921, he sponsored legislation on education, small business, oil and gas, and consumer protection, chairing the Senate Finance Committee and serving as president pro tem in 1927. After leaving office in 1935 he returned to law practice, and in 1970 his family donated land for a park in his honor.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2002

As the First World War drew to a close in October 1918, the scholar-statesman Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk gathered delegates from a dozen Central and Eastern European peoples at Philadelphia's Independence Hall — the very birthplace of American independence — to proclaim a Declaration of Common Aims. Within weeks he would become the first president of a newly independent Czechoslovakia. Choosing Independence Hall was no accident: these emerging nations consciously drew on the American revolutionary example as they broke free from the collapsing empires of Europe.

Florence, AZ

Charles D. Poston, often called the "Father of Arizona," was a mining promoter and booster whose lobbying helped create Arizona Territory in 1863, and he became its first delegate to Congress. Fascinated by Persian sun-worship, he dreamed of a temple atop this butte near Florence, and after his death he was entombed here in a stone monument erected by the Territory in 1907. The pyramid-topped tomb crowns what is now called Poston Butte, overlooking the desert country he championed.

Clinton, CT

The words carved here echo the most solemn line in American commemoration — the inscription of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington, dedicated in 1921 to a nameless serviceman brought home from the battlefields of the First World War. The phrase 'known but to God,' borrowed from Rudyard Kipling's epitaph for the unidentified war dead, gave a nation a way to grieve the countless soldiers who fell without their names ever being recovered. Across the country, towns raised their own memorials in that same spirit, turning a distant tomb in Virginia into a place of remembrance on the village green. This monument in Clinton stands in that tradition, honoring the anonymous dead who gave everything and asked for no recognition in return.

Tombstone, AZ

Built in 1882, this handsome Victorian courthouse was the seat of justice for Cochise County during Tombstone's raucous silver-boom heyday, when the town's fortunes rested on rich ore and its reputation on frontier lawlessness. From these rooms judges, sheriffs, and juries tried to impose order on one of the West's wildest boomtowns. Long since restored, the building now serves as an Arizona state historic park and museum.

Devine, TX

Washington Allen Tomerlin set aside this ground for family and neighbors when this corner of Medina County was still remote and thinly settled, the earliest marked grave dating to 1875. Beneath its stones rest veterans of four American wars, three brothers said to have ridden as Texas Rangers, and the Brackens family, freed slaves who made their home nearby. Many older markers bear only initials, their stories now half-remembered.

Arlington, TX

First used in the 1870s by the pioneer Wilkinson family, whose graves are marked by clusters of rock, this burial ground also holds members of the Angel and Tomlin families. Its oldest dated stone belongs to Virginia native Solomon Tomlin, a horseman and farmer who brought his family to Texas in the 1860s and died in 1884. His son James Tives "Buck" Tomlin, a noted breeder of racing horses, bought the property in 1888.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2006

Tommy Loughran rose to fame in the 1920s, boxing's 'Golden Age,' when the sport commanded the same national spotlight as baseball. The 'Philly Phantom' held the World Light Heavyweight title from 1927 to 1929 and won with brains rather than brawn, using footwork and precision to outmaneuver bigger, harder-hitting men. A gentleman inside the ring and out, he stayed devoted to the Philadelphia neighborhood and church that raised him.

Saint Louis County, MO

From 1951 to 1965 this spot held an open-air concert shell built by friends of Benoist Tompkins, a founder and steadfast supporter of the Little Symphony Association. In the postwar decades, community bandshells like this one brought live orchestral music into public parks, part of a broad flowering of civic arts culture across suburban America. The structure is gone, but the marker keeps the memory of the music — and the man who championed it — alive.

Toms River, NJ

On the morning of September 11, 2001, coordinated terrorist attacks struck the United States, bringing down the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and killing thousands of people from communities across the country. New Jersey — whose shore towns and suburbs send tens of thousands of commuters into Manhattan each day — was among the hardest-hit states, and Toms River was one of many Ocean County communities to grieve neighbors who never came home. In the years that followed, towns like this one raised quiet memorials so the date carved here, and the lives behind it, would stay part of local memory.

City of Tonawanda, NY

This memorial in the City of Tonawanda honors the local servicemen who died during the Vietnam War, a conflict that drew American forces into Southeast Asia from the late 1950s through 1975. Communities across New York and the nation erected such markers in the decades following the war to ensure their fallen neighbors were remembered. The dedication speaks plainly of "the greatest sacrifice" — the lives given by young men sent far from the industrial towns along the Erie Canal and Niagara River.

Victoria, TX

News of a French colony on the Gulf Coast sent New Spain scrambling, launching eleven expeditions to hunt down and destroy La Salle's ill-fated settlement, which Governor Alonso de León found deserted in 1689. Over the following decades the Spanish planted Presidio La Bahía and Mission Espíritu Santo in the region, and by 1725 missionaries settled at this spot—later called Tonkawa Bank—for its reliable spring water, stone, and timber. The repeated moves of mission and presidio along the Guadalupe and Garcitas Creek trace the restless, difficult birth of Spanish colonial Texas.

Newcastle, TX

During the Civil War the Tonkawa people allied themselves with Texans, serving as scouts along the frontier defense line from the Red River to the Rio Grande and watching for both hostile raiders and Federal incursion. Commanders prized their skill so highly they sometimes fed the scouts at personal expense. The Tonkawa paid dearly for that loyalty: in October 1862 a devastating attack on their camp near present Anadarko killed 137 of about 300 people, and the survivors were later resettled near Fort Griffin before removal to Oklahoma in 1884.

Nye County, NV

In May 1900, Nye County District Attorney Jim Butler made the discovery that ended a twenty-year slump in Nevada's economy — the Paiute had long used the name Tonopah for a spring in the nearby mountains. The strike proved to be the richest silver producer in the nation, spawning a railroad, great mills, and a population of some 10,000, and by 1905 it had taken the county seat from Belmont. Though the mines faltered in the 1920s, Tonopah's lasting fame rests on the financiers and politicians it launched.

Arlington, TX

Perched above the Bankhead Highway between Dallas and Fort Worth, Top O' Hill Terrace began as a genteel 1920s tea garden before Fred and Mary Browning turned it into one of Texas's most notorious gambling dens, complete with an escape tunnel and a hidden room to foil raids. It drew high rollers, a brothel, and the fury of crusading Prohibitionist pastor J. Frank Norris, who vowed to one day own the place. A 1947 Texas Ranger raid helped bring it down, and in the 1950s a Baptist seminary bought the grounds—fulfilling Norris's promise—where Arlington Baptist College stands today.

Morris Township, NJ

In 1916 this estate, called "Topsides," was built for Henry "Harry" Romeyn Rawle and Mary "Mollie" Lefferts Rawle. Its architect, Harrie Thomas Lindeberg, ranked among the most sought-after designers of American country houses in the early twentieth century, celebrated for gracious, romantic homes built for the era's well-to-do families. The house belongs to the golden age of the American country estate in the wooded hills of Morris County.

Lander County, NV

High in the Toquima Range, this basalt cave holds walls and ceilings covered with pictographs in abstract and geometric designs painted in white, red, yellow, and black. Scholars believe the images—possibly ceremonial markers, visionary records, or art—were painted by the ancestors of the Western Shoshone who historically occupied the region. Today a protective enclosure shields the ancient paintings from vandalism while allowing visitors to view them.

Grapevine, TX

This hand-hewn log cabin was raised along a creek at the edge of the Cross Timbers near the pioneer settlement of Dove, on a headright taken up in 1845 by Francis Throop, a Peters colonist from Missouri. J. C. Wiley bought the land in 1868 and sold it in 1886 to Kentucky farmer John R. Torian, whose family lived in the cabin into the 1940s. It was moved about four miles to this site in 1976.

Jefferson, TX

William P. Torrans built this Greek Revival home in Jefferson during the 1860s, when the town was a bustling riverport in East Texas. It later passed to a former mayor and druggist and to the family of Dr. Albert Clopton before Confederate veteran Solomon Spellings moved the residence to this site after 1882. Successive owners, including a local grocer, added to it into the mid-twentieth century.

Waco, TX

Established in 1844 during the days of the Republic of Texas, Torrey's Trading Post No. 2 sat on a bluff above Trading House Creek as a meeting ground between settlers and Native nations. Here President Sam Houston delivered his celebrated peace talks to assembled chiefs, and the post served as a "listening post" that helped keep an uneasy frontier calm. Run by George Barnard for the Torrey brothers, it was later moved to the growing town of Waco.

Moore County, NC

In February 1776, as North Carolina's Loyalists rallied to the Crown, area Tories gathered at Alexander Morrison's home in the Cross Hill community before marching toward the coast. Their advance ended at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, where Patriot militia routed the Loyalist force in one of the Revolution's first Southern victories.

Sonoma, CA · est. 1982

Built in 1852 on land once owned by General Vallejo, this adobe began as a store, library, and dwelling before evolving into a succession of hotels. By 1886 Italian proprietors renamed it the Tuscano Hotel, a spelling that local usage softened to Toscano. Its layered history mirrors Sonoma's growth from Mexican-era town to a community shaped by immigrant enterprise.

Tours, TX

In 1872 a group of settlers rolled in by wagon from Teutopolis, Illinois, arriving on St. Martin's Day and first calling their new home Martinsville. They soon renamed it Tours for the French city where St. Martin had been bishop, and built a log Catholic church dedicated in 1874. A school, shops, saloons, and even a brass band followed, but the community faded as Depression-era farm income fell and young people left for the cities.

Tow, TX

The 1850 grave of eight-year-old Margaret Thorp, said to have died of a snakebite, marks the age of this burial ground in the community that grew around the Bluffton-Tow Saltworks. A successful fur hatmaker arrived in 1853, the same year William Tow and his family settled Tow Valley, and generations of area families have tended the graves ever since. An association formed in the 1950s continues that long tradition of care.

Whitney, TX

Named for a chief of the Hainai (a Caddoan people), Towash was one of Hill County's first settlements. A grist mill and carding machine built by S. C. Dyer in 1850 turned it into a trade center that boasted 15 businesses by 1879, until the railroad passed it by and sent it into decline. Its ruins now lie beneath the waters of Lake Whitney.

Shamrock, TX

The distinctive Tower Building rose in 1936 along the newly bustling U.S. Route 66, one of many roadside businesses built to serve a nation newly on wheels. Designed by Pampa architect J. C. Berry and built by local entrepreneur J. M. Tindall, it combined a gas station and diner in curvilinear Art Deco lines, once trimmed with glowing neon. It remains a polished example of the Mother Road's golden age.

Snyder, TX

Dr. H. G. Towle and his wife Mary came to Snyder soon after marrying in 1905 to open a jewelry and optical store, and in 1912 they built this two-story brick home with a full basement, blending colonial revival and craftsman touches. Beyond his practice, Dr. Towle helped organize the town's volunteer fire department, served two decades as mayor, and presided over the Texas Board of Optometry. The home stayed in the family until 1956.

Mexia, TX

Gen. José Antonio Mexía was a Mexican military officer and promoter of Texas colonization who served in his country's legation to the United States and its senate in the early 1830s. Though he first backed Santa Anna, he turned against the general when he seized dictatorial power, fleeing to Texas in 1834 and leading expeditions against him until he was captured and executed by Santa Anna's order in 1839. His son and daughter later settled the family's Limestone County land and donated the site for the town that bears his name in 1871.

Stockdale, TX

Fletcher S. Stockdale, a Kentucky-trained lawyer who came to Texas in the 1840s, rose through railroads and the state senate to sit on the committee that drafted Texas's Ordinance of Secession. He served the Confederacy as a military aide and staff officer and, as lieutenant governor, became the last governor of Confederate Texas in 1865 when Pendleton Murrah fled to Mexico. After the war he pioneered refrigerated shipping of Texas beef and helped lead the 1875 constitutional convention.

Bryan, TX

William Joel Bryan came to Texas in 1831 as a grandson of Moses Austin and nephew of Stephen F. Austin, placing him at the center of the family that founded Anglo Texas. He fought in the 1835 Battle of Bexar during the Texas Revolution and, upon Stephen F. Austin's death in 1836, inherited leadership of the influential Austin-Bryan clan. A lifelong planter near Peach Point, he later donated the land for the town of Bryan, which became the seat of Brazos County in 1866.

Abernathy, TX

Abernathy sprang up in 1909 when the Santa Fe Railroad pushed south from Plainview toward Lubbock, and it was named for Monroe G. Abernathy, treasurer of the company that promoted the townsite. It thrived as a cattle railhead, absorbing buildings moved from the vanished town of Bartonsite, and centered its civic life on the "Old Tabernacle" from 1918 to 1947. In its earliest days, before roads existed, plowed furrows guided visitors to the town doctor's house.

Amherst, TX

Amherst began in 1913 as a cattle-shipping point on the Pecos & Northern Texas Railroad, serving the vast 300,000-acre Springlake Ranch that W.E. 'Colonel Bill' Halsell and his son Ewing had established in 1902. When the High Plains economy shifted from ranching to farming in 1923, the Halsells carved up their land for new settlers at $25 an acre and set aside town lots, a hotel, and ground for schools and churches. A general store, post office, and bank followed, and by 1930 the town's population reached 964.

Antelope, TX

Antelope took its name from the springs where pronghorn watered and where the Kiowa once camped. Platted in 1875 along the Henrietta–Graham mail route, it grew into a bustling supply stop for cattle drives heading north, boasting a spa built around its mineral wells, a hotel, school, and 400 residents by 1887. Ranching and later oil kept the community alive well into the twentieth century.

Aquilla, TX

Named for the nearby creek, Aquilla was surveyed in 1879 as the Texas Central Railroad pushed through Hill County, and it quickly grew into a busy shipping point crowded with stores, hotels, churches, and even a health spa. At its peak in the 1910s the streets filled with ranchers, farmers, and traveling salesmen, and one of Texas's earliest chartered state banks did business here before the town settled into a quieter farming life.

Bedias, TX

Long before Anglo settlers arrived, the Bidai people—an agricultural nation regarded as the region's oldest inhabitants—gave their name to the Bedias creeks and, eventually, the town. The first white settlement here rose in 1835 under Thomas P. Plaster, and in 1903 the coming of an International & Great Northern Railroad branch pulled the population toward a 'New' Bedias, though residents fought to keep the old name rather than honor a railroad official. The area is also famous for its 'Bediasite' tektites, glassy stones the Indians called 'jewels of the moon,' and as the one-time home of Sarah Dodson, credited with sewing the first Lone Star flag.

Buffalo Gap, TX

Buffalo Gap takes its name from the pass in the Callahan Divide that funneled the great herds — buffalo that fed the Apache and Comanche and later drew white hunters around 1874, whose dugouts became the town's first homes. Named county seat in 1878 and sitting on the Western Cattle Trail, it briefly flourished, only to be eclipsed in 1883 when the railroad crowned nearby Abilene as county seat. Its rise and decline mirror dozens of small Texas towns that lived and died by the trail and the rail.

Calvert, TX

Calvert began as "Sterling" in Sterling C. Robertson's 1820s colony and became a rowdy, booming cotton-export and trade center — its inscription conjures ox-carts, saloons, and casino tables piled with gold. It served as a Civil War mustering and supply point, then moved two miles to meet the Houston & Texas Central Railroad in 1868, taking a new name from Judge Robert Calvert, a landowner descended from Lord Baltimore. The railroad cemented its place as a regional cotton hub.

New Orleans, LA

Surveyor Charles Zimpel laid out Carrollton in 1833 on the former Macarty Plantation, land that had once been the uppermost portion of Bienville's 1719 French grant. The town served as the seat of Jefferson Parish from 1852 to 1874, when it was annexed by a growing New Orleans. Its 1854 courthouse was designed by the noted architect Henry Howard.

Schlopata, TX

Cat Spring was founded in 1832 by members of the Amsler, Kleberg, and Von Roeder families, among the earliest German immigrants to settle in what was then Mexican Texas. Their arrival marked the beginning of a wave of German migration that would leave a lasting imprint on the region. The community became a nucleus of German culture in Austin County.

Caldwell, TX

Originally called Yellow Prairie and settled by Alexander Thomson, Jr. — an early Texas patriot and partner of colonizer Sterling C. Robertson — this community relocated to the railroad tracks when the line came through in 1880. It was renamed in 1884 for Capt. H.C. Chriesman, a surveyor for Stephen F. Austin. Today it serves the surrounding ranches.

Claude, TX

Claude sprang up in 1887 as the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad pushed across the Panhandle, and it took its name from Claude Ayers, the engineer of the first passenger train through town. First resident Jerry Cavanaugh donated the townsite, and in an 1890 county-seat contest the deciding vote was famously cast by legendary rancher Charles Goodnight. Churches, a school, and the incorporation of the town soon followed, and noted Panhandle historian Laura V. Hamner taught among its early teachers.

Corrigan, TX

Tucked in the piney woods of East Texas, Corrigan began about 1860 when settler James B. Hendry donated land for a townsite. The coming of the Texas & New Orleans Railroad in the early 1880s sparked a timber boom, and the town — named for railroad official Pat Corrigan — soon boasted a hotel, stores, a blacksmith shop, and even a ten-pin bowling alley. Lumber, ranching, and farming still anchor the local economy.

Craft, TX

First called Independence, the town of Craft sprang up along the railroad in the 1890s and took its name from Thomas J. Craft, its first postmaster and leading citizen. In 1896 local growers launched commercial tomato production here, and within two decades this corner of East Texas shipped an astonishing ninety percent of the state's tomatoes. Though the town faded in the 1930s, its brief boom made it a linchpin of a regional farm economy.

D'Hanis, TX

In 1847, twenty-nine families led by Theodore Gentilz settled here on behalf of Henri Castro, the Alsatian-born empresario whose colony brought European immigrants to the Texas Hill Country in the years just after annexation. The community took its name from Guillaume D'Hanis, an official of Castro's colonization society. When the Southern Pacific Railroad later bypassed the settlement, residents relocated to a new townsite, leaving behind what is now called Old D'Hanis.

Dawn, TX

Named by hopeful pioneers who saw in it "the dawning of a new country," Dawn gained the county's second post office in 1889. Its first building was a Santa Fe Railroad boxcar pressed into service as a station house in 1905, and W.E. Neal and his sons developed the townsite in earnest in 1914 with a lumber yard, hotel, bank, and store. It settled into life as a center of the surrounding farming country.

Dawson, TX

Dawson grew out of Spring Hill, the oldest settlement in Navarro County, which Republic of Texas Indian agent Dr. George Washington Hill founded in 1838 as a trading post to ease relations with Native peoples. Britton Dawson, a San Jacinto veteran who claimed his land as service bounty, settled at Spring Hill in 1846 and built a home that served as a stagecoach stop. When the Texas & St. Louis Railroad — the "Cotton Belt" — laid tracks through in 1881, Dawson's sons donated 100 acres for a townsite, and the population of Spring Hill promptly picked up and moved to the new railroad town.

Dinero, TX

Settled in 1838 by farmers and ranchers, this town began as "Barlow" after a local ferry operator, and its people helped organize Live Oak County in 1856 and started a school by 1858. Around 1872, rumors of buried "dinero"—Spanish for money—gave the town its lasting name. It moved a mile west in 1913 to meet a new rail line, later piped natural gas toward Houston, and counted among its residents the celebrated Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie.

Douglass, TX

Michael Costley, remembered as "The Father of Douglass," reached Texas in 1832, enlisted in the Texas Army, and patrolled the Old San Antonio Road before laying out a town he expected to flourish. A river port on the Angelina shipped its cotton to the Gulf and a stagecoach line came through, but Costley was shot dead in a 1837 gunfight before his vision fully took hold. Named for Republic of Texas congressman Kelsey Harris Douglass, the town grew into a modest but busy waystation of inns, shops, and churches on the road between the Angelina and Neches rivers.

Eagle Lake, TX

The town takes its name from a lake where, in 1821, an exploring party led by Stephen F. Austin killed an eagle. A stage line linking Houston and San Antonio set up lakeside headquarters in 1851, and the townsite was platted in 1856, just before the railroad arrived in 1859. Over the decades Eagle Lake reinvented itself again and again — cattle and farm market, then rice-growing center after 1898, then oil town and shipper of sand and gravel, and finally a mecca for fishing and goose hunting.

Ennis, TX

Ennis sprang up in 1872 as a market stop on the Houston & Texas Central Railway, named for a railroad official, and quickly gathered churches, schools, and a mixed population of Anglo, French, Mexican, and — after 1874 — Czech settlers working its cattle and cotton economy. A coup in 1892, when local backers won the railroad's division shops, secured the town's industrial future.

Fashing, TX

Platted in 1915 near the old San Patricio Trail, this town was first called 'Hickok' until the post office rejected the name and residents borrowed 'Fashing' from a popular tobacco tag reading 'Fashion.' Early life centered on schools and churches, but the ground beneath proved the town's fortune: oil arrived in 1946, the first major uranium discovery in Texas came at nearby Tordilla Hill in 1954, and gas and sulfur plants followed. Fashing became a genuine center of mid-century mineral development.

Falfurrias, TX

Founded in 1909 on old Spanish grant and later King Ranch land, Flowella was laid out as the trade center for a planned farm colony and named for a flowing well at its heart. A hotel, store, post office, and school briefly served about a hundred residents. But hard seasons closed the businesses one by one, and by the late 1920s the town had faded, leaving none of its original buildings.

Fulshear, TX

The land here was granted in 1824 to Churchill Fulshear, one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" colonists. His son, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence, built a four-story brick mansion in the 1850s and bred and raced horses; his protégé John Huggins went on to train the first American horse to win the English Derby. The town itself was platted in 1890 when the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad arrived, quickly becoming a local trade center.

Goodnight, TX

The Panhandle town of Goodnight bears the name of Charles Goodnight (1836–1929), the celebrated scout, trail blazer, and cattleman who established the first ranch in the Texas Panhandle in 1876. Known as the 'Burbank of the Range' for his experiments in breeding and range improvement, he loomed large in the settlement of the high plains.

Grandview, TX

Grandview owes its name to a traveler who took one look at the rolling Johnson County prairie and exclaimed "What a grand view!" Settled in 1850 on a land grant from Governor Elisha M. Pease, the community hauled its supplies by ox wagon from Houston and built up a church, post office, and the county's first Masonic lodge before the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad pulled the whole town a mile southeast in 1883. Incorporated in 1891, it survived a devastating 1920 fire that razed 135 buildings and rebuilt, merging its name into one word in 1925.

Gunter, TX

The town of Gunter rose on the sprawling North Texas ranch of Jot Gunter, a North Carolina–born Confederate veteran who came to Texas to practice law and became one of Grayson County's leading businessmen and land developers. By the mid-1890s his ranch spread across more than 20,000 acres. The community that grew on his land took his name and was incorporated in 1914.

Hidalgo, TX

Founded as Edinburgh in 1852, this Rio Grande town served as the seat of Hidalgo County for more than half a century. In 1861 it was renamed for Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the parish priest who launched Mexico's struggle for independence in 1810—a fitting tribute in a borderland deeply shaped by Mexican heritage. A devastating overflow of the Rio Grande in September 1887 nearly washed the town away.