Search Markers

Houston County, TX

Creek Cemetery began in 1889 with the burial of infant Sydney Hester, whose parents had two years earlier deeded land to the community—then called Georgia Camp—for a school. The burial ground grew alongside the settlement and today holds many of the area's pioneer families, along with veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars. Descendants of those early settlers still tend the grounds.

Port Bolivar, TX

James Crenshaw, a Virginia native and Civil War veteran, brought his wife Henrietta to the Bolivar Peninsula in 1872, where he farmed and ferried his produce to Galveston markets aboard a fleet of nine sailboats. Two young daughters who died in the 1870s and 1880s were buried in an oak grove near the family home. The house survived the catastrophic 1900 Galveston hurricane, and though the Crenshaws later left, descendants preserved the little cemetery, donating it in 2003 to the local school district.

Lower Windsor Township, PA · est. 1960

About 1730 the frontiersman Thomas Cresap settled along the Susquehanna on land that Maryland's Lord Baltimore claimed against Pennsylvania, making his fortified home a flashpoint in the bitter boundary dispute between the two colonies. In 1736 Penn's agents forcibly evicted him and burned his "fort," and Cresap moved west into Maryland, where he remained a restless figure in frontier affairs until his death around 1790. His stand gave the border quarrel one of its most colorful episodes.

Louisville, KY

On April 3, 1974, one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history — the "Super Outbreak" — swept across the Ohio Valley, and a violent twister tore through Louisville, battering the Crescent Hill neighborhood and nearby Cherokee Park. In the year that followed, residents banded together to clear the wreckage and rebuild, and on the disaster's first anniversary they set this plaque to honor that shared effort. Its motto — "Crescent Hill, We Care" — captures the neighborly resolve that turned catastrophe into renewal.

Cresson, TX

As settlers filled newly formed Hood County after 1866, the little town of Cresson taught its children first in one-room schoolhouses, replacing them with ever-larger buildings as the community grew. After a red-brick school burned in 1930, a Dallas firm designed the yellow-brick Mission Revival schoolhouse that still stands—its central parapet shaped to echo the curved gable of the Alamo. After Cresson consolidated with Granbury in 1967, neighbors organized to save the building, which now serves as a community center.

Cresson Township, PA · est. 2014

In the early twentieth century tuberculosis was a leading killer, and Pennsylvania fought back with a network of state sanatoria where fresh air, rest, and good food were the main treatments. Opened in 1913 on mountain land donated by Andrew Carnegie and guided by health commissioner S. G. Dixon, Cresson became a national model. It was notable for being racially integrated and for running its own nursing school and elementary school, treating some 40,000 patients before it closed in 1964.

Schulenburg, TX

Raised in Fayette County in 1861 and led by former Prussian artillery officer Edmund Creuzbaur, this Confederate battery of roughly 150 men and four cannons served across Texas and Louisiana. Its most dramatic action came at Calcasieu Pass in May 1864, where it attacked and captured two Union gunboats in a 75-minute fight. The unit later passed to Creuzbaur's brother-in-law, Capt. Charles Welhausen.

Forkston Township, PA

These lakes in the wooded hills of Forkston Township carry the name of J. Q. Reveling, a Pennsylvania figure remembered as the "Dean of Pennsylvania Sportsmen" and a driving force behind the state's early game and fish laws. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unregulated hunting and fishing had badly depleted America's wildlife, and reformers across the country pushed to codify seasons, limits, and protections. Naming a body of water for the man credited as "Father of Game and Fish Codes" reflects the era's growing conviction that woods and waters were a public trust worth safeguarding for future generations.

Crews, TX

Settled in the 1880s and named for Ballinger businessman C. R. Crews, this Runnels County community organized quickly around its institutions—a school in 1890, a post office in 1892, and Methodist and Baptist churches by the mid-1890s. At its height Crews supported eleven businesses and a seven-teacher school. The post office closed in 1922 and the school consolidated away in 1948, but the churches remain active.

Henderson, TX

After migrating from Alabama to Rusk County in 1867 with nine grown children, Abraham B. Crim set aside an acre of ground as a family burying place, formalized in 1883. The earliest marked grave belongs to his wife Jo Anna, buried in 1882, and most of the oldest interments are Crim kin alongside other pioneers of the Crim's Chapel community. The cemetery preserves the footprint of one settler family's roots in post–Civil War East Texas.

Dallas, TX

Built in 1923, this Dallas house was first home to Dr. J.H. Cristler, who arrived in 1911 after helping organize Childress County in the Texas Panhandle. From 1938 it was occupied by his daughter Edna and her husband, J. Woodall Rodgers, mayor of Dallas from 1939 to 1947. Blending Prairie School and Mediterranean styles, the home stayed in the family until 1959.

Otto, TX

Criswell Cemetery grew from ten acres deeded by Marcus Thomas Durham in 1886 for a school, church, and burial ground, though graves already dated to 1873—among them Durham's own father. In 1950 a community association bought the nearby school and church and began an annual homecoming to fund upkeep of the grounds.

Frankfort, KY

John Jordan Crittenden (1787-1863) lived in this Frankfort house for the last forty-four years of his life while serving as Kentucky governor, five-time U.S. Senator, and Attorney General under three presidents. In 1860 he authored the Crittenden Compromise, a last, futile effort to reconcile North and South and preserve the Union on the eve of the Civil War. The house, built in 1800 on land once owned by Aaron Burr, hosted Daniel Webster and President-elect Zachary Taylor.

Bastrop, TX

New York native Henry Crocheron and his wife Mary Ann built this Greek Revival house around 1857, when Crocheron was among Bastrop's leading citizens with interests in lumber, land, and cotton. The couple raised their niece 'Mollie' Nicholson McDowall here; after her husband's death she inherited the home, ran a music school in it, and later became a noted clubwoman in Houston. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1962.

Marblehead, MA

In 1886 Uriel Crocker, a partner in the prominent Boston publishing house Crocker & Brewster, gave the greater part of this rocky harborside ground to his native Marblehead. A printer by trade in an era when Boston presses helped shape American letters, Crocker chose to memorialize a lifetime of success by returning open land to the town of his birth. The park still overlooks the harbor he knew as a boy.

Crockett, TX

Founded in 1837 and named for David Crockett, who had passed through on his way to the Alamo the year before, Crockett grew into a hub of the young Republic of Texas frontier. Its fortified log courthouse sheltered settlers during conflicts with Native peoples, and by the Civil War the town hosted a camp of instruction. As a telegraph and stagecoach station, it tied the surrounding farming and timber country into the wider South.

Ozona, TX

Carved from Bexar Territory, Crockett County was created on January 22, 1875, and formally organized on July 7, 1891, with Ozona as its county seat. It honors David Crockett (1786–1836), the Tennessee congressman who died defending the Alamo. The marker records the county's founding and its namesake in a few spare lines.

Ozona, TX

Completed in 1902 as Crockett County's second courthouse, this American Gothic building was designed by San Angelo architect Oscar Ruffini and built of fine stone quarried nearby. In a remote ranching country, it doubled as the community's social center, hosting cowboy dances, box suppers, and roundup celebrations. In 1909 an arc light was mounted on its steeple to signal the sheriff and guide travelers into Ozona.

Ozona, TX

Built in 1892, just a year after Crockett County was organized, this stone jail was raised from rock quarried on nearby land. Its tower may have been meant for hangings, though no gallows was ever installed, and the lockup was never filled to capacity — its most notable guests were the 1954 robbers of the Ozona National Bank. In a homey frontier touch, the sheriff's wife once gave local children piano lessons in the family's quarters around 1915.

Ozona, TX

In 1923 Fort Worth publisher Chester R. Bunker's World Oil Co. began drilling on the L. P. Powell Ranch, and after slow, cash-strapped work the wildcat came in during the spring of 1925 at 2,647 feet. That first strike opened the Powell Field and turned a ranching county into oil country, with 180 wells eventually drilled on Powell's sprawling ranch. Powell No. 1 has produced continuously ever since.

Honey Grove, TX

Late in 1835, frontiersman and former congressman David Crockett crossed into Texas along the Red River, camping near this spot where he found wild bees and honey in hollow trees and, in letters home, dubbed the place a "honey grove." Within weeks he died at the Alamo, but his nickname stuck. Surveyor Samuel A. Erwin settled here in 1839, and with Benjamin S. Walcott platted the town of Honey Grove, which grew to some 4,000 people by 1890 after the railroad arrived.

Ozona, TX

This marker honors David Crockett, the Tennessee frontiersman, soldier, and congressman whose life became American legend. Born in 1786, he fought in the Creek War, served in the Tennessee legislature and the U.S. Congress, and then set out for Texas in early 1836. He died that March defending the Alamo, and the county the marker stands in bears his name.

Dallas, TX

A South Carolina native, John M. Crockett came to the young settlement of Dallas in 1848 and opened one of its first law offices. He rose to serve as state legislator, mayor of Dallas, and lieutenant governor of Texas in the first years of the Confederacy, and even logged weather observations for the Smithsonian. His public life traces the arc of frontier Dallas from raw settlement toward established city.

Granbury, TX

Frontiersman and former congressman David Crockett came to Texas in early 1836, pledged allegiance to the provisional government, and died with the Alamo's defenders that March. For his sacrifice his heirs were granted nearly 1,300 acres, and in 1853 his widow Elizabeth and their sons arrived to claim the land, building cabins and farming here. Over later generations the tract passed through the hands of cattlemen, a Depression-era dairy, and a quarter-horse operation.

Gilmer, TX

J. F. Croley bought the Croley Hardware Company in Gilmer in 1890 and, as many general merchants of the era did, added an undertaking service to the store's offerings. The enterprise grew into a partnership by 1920 and a burial association by 1933, and Croley's nephew Croley Cook built a dedicated funeral home with a 200-seat chapel in 1946-47. An expanded chapel followed in 1979.

Hatboro, PA · est. 1965

Named for a tavern that once stood nearby, Crooked Billet was the scene of a sharp Revolutionary War clash in the spring of 1778, while the British held Philadelphia. General John Lacey's militia, tasked with choking off supplies flowing to the occupied city, camped here on May 1 when British troops surprised them at dawn, scattering the Americans with heavy losses.

Mason vicinity, TX

This burial ground served the earliest citizens of Mason and nearby Koocksville, with its oldest recorded grave dating to 1856. Among those laid to rest here is the county's first sheriff, Thomas Milligan. The Crosby family bought the surrounding land in 1866, giving the cemetery the name it has carried ever since.

Crosbyton, TX

This state monument honors Henry Clay Smith — "Uncle Hank" — a German-born pioneer who, with his wife Elizabeth, built the famed Rock House in 1877 and became a byword for frontier hospitality on the Texas Plains. The couple settled at Old Emma above the Cap Rock, an escarpment marking the edge of the high plains, and the State of Texas raised this memorial to them in 1936. They lie buried near the home that made their name.

Crosbyton, TX

Crosby County was created in 1876 from the Young and Bexar territories and organized a decade later in 1886, taking its name from Stephen Crosby, a Commissioner of the General Land Office who came to Texas in 1845. Its county seat migrated across the plains from Estacado in 1886 to Emma in 1890 before settling in Crosbyton in 1911. The shifting seat traces the slow settlement of the West Texas high plains.

Crosbyton, TX

After Crosby County voters chose the new town of Crosbyton as their seat in 1910, disputed elections tied up the decision in court until 1912, clearing the way for a proper courthouse. Fort Worth architect M. L. Waller designed the Neo-Classical building—its full-height entry crowned by a pedimented, columned portico—and contractor S. Goodrum completed it in late 1914. It has served as the seat of Crosby County government ever since and is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Crosbyton, TX

Crosby County's seat wandered across the South Plains before settling down. It began in 1879 at Estacado, a Quaker colony where county offices worked out of dugouts, shacks, and wagons until the first courthouse rose in 1888. The seat jumped to Emma in 1890, then to Crosbyton after the Crosbyton-South Plains Railroad bypassed Emma in 1910 — and the present courthouse followed in 1914.

Crosbyton, TX

Crosbyton sprang up in 1908 on the ranch lands of the C.B. Livestock Company, which deliberately built a school, store, railroad, and inn to lure homesteaders onto the West Texas plains. The strategy worked: by 1911 the town claimed a thousand residents and the county seat. Once open range, the surrounding country became rich irrigated farmland.

Crosbyton, TX

Established in 1909, this cemetery was carved from a 90,000-acre spread run by the C. B. Livestock Company on the Texas South Plains. Part-owner Julian Bassett, who also donated the Crosbyton townsite, gave the land when a ranch cowboy named James Boggs was thought to be dying—though the first actual burial was that of 18-month-old Willie Oliver. Bassett and many other early settlers now rest among the graves.

McMullen County, TX

The community of Cross in McMullen County grew from one of the area's earliest permanent settlements, known over the years as Nopal, San Miguel, and Franklin before taking the name of Samuel C. Cross, who opened its store and became postmaster in 1924. The post office closed a decade later, but ranching sustained the area, and in 1953 a nearby gas well—then the largest in the state—tied this quiet ranch country to the Texas energy boom.

Cross Creek Township, PA · est. 1950

On the eve of the Revolution, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians pushing into western Pennsylvania first gathered for worship in 1775 at the shelter of Vance's Fort, a mile north. By 1779 they had raised their own church nearby and called their first pastor, planting a durable religious community on a still-contested frontier; the stone building standing today was erected in 1864. It is a portrait of how faith and settlement advanced together across the Alleghenies.

Brownwood vicinity, TX

Southern families settling here after the Civil War formed a community first called Cross Out, renamed Cross Cut in 1897 by a clerical error on a post office application. The cemetery began in 1879 with the burial of Caroline Pentecost Elsberry. An oil strike in 1923 briefly swelled the town, but by 1940 the dead outnumbered the living, and after the school consolidated in 1954 only a few buildings and this graveyard remained.

Fredericksburg, TX

Long an Indian signal point rising 1,915 feet, this limestone hill was recorded in 1847 by German geologist Ferdinand Roemer, who arrived as German colonists settled the Fredericksburg area. Settler John Christian Durst, finding an old timber cross on its summit, named it Kreuzberg, or Cross Mountain. Its Easter fires recall both a German folk tradition and the 1847 Meusebach treaty that made peace with the Comanche nation.

Cross Plains, TX

The land holding Cross Plains Cemetery was first granted to James Knight, one of Stephen F. Austin's original colonists, as reward for service in the Mexican-American War, before passing through a string of absentee owners. The first burial came in 1882 — the young son of "Uncle Johnnie" Laird — and in 1905 the Steele family deeded the ground to cemetery trustees. Today it holds the town's founding families, its first mayor, John A. Wagner, many military veterans, and members of its fraternal lodges.

Cross Plains, TX

Belmont L. Shields founded the Cross Plains Review in April 1909, deliberately getting his paper going before the railroad arrived — which it did when the Texas Central reached town in 1912 and most of the community picked up and moved a mile to the new townsite. Passing through a series of owners after 1914, the Review became the town's memory, chronicling everything from local growth to the death of pulp writer Robert E. Howard and the wildfires of 2005. As the oldest business in Cross Plains, it is woven into the town's story.

Grand Prairie, TX

The Eastern Cross Timbers is a narrow ribbon of sandy woodland dividing the Blackland and Grand Prairies, and for centuries its springs, salt licks, grass, and game made it a natural gathering place. Wichita people of Caddoan stock roamed here in the 1700s, while Kiowa and Comanche wintered and traded along routes that carried southern flint northward; French traders arrived by 1720 and Spanish expeditions passed through toward their missions. Anglo-American settlement in the 1840s brought conflict, culminating in the 1841 Battle of Village Creek, after which the tribes withdrew westward.

George West, TX

From Spanish colonial days into statehood, travel across this part of Texas depended on rough dirt tracks, many simply called "ox-cart roads" for the wooden Mexican carts that lumbered along them. This site marked the junction of two such roads — one from Brownsville to San Antonio, the other from Laredo to Goliad and on to the coast at Indianola. Built entirely of wood and rawhide, the carts stood taller than a man, squealed so loudly that drivers greased their hubs with prickly pear, and for two centuries carried nearly all the freight in Texas.

Mesa County, CO

At this arroyo, generations of travelers forded the Grand River—today known as the Colorado—along the North Branch of the Old Spanish Trail and the Salt Lake Wagon Road. Between roughly 1830 and 1880, this crossing was a vital artery for traders, wagon trains, and settlers pushing westward across the arid Colorado Plateau. Fording a major river was dangerous, seasonal work, and this spot became a known and trusted link in a vast overland network.

Celina, TX

East of Celina, a Baptist congregation gathered in 1882 on a acre-and-a-half tract that brothers Abiel and Edmond Stelzer had held in common, and the burial ground beside it already held graves reaching back to 1875. When the railroad arrived, the congregation followed it into the new town and became First Baptist Church of Celina, but the cemetery stayed put and remains in use today. Its official 2006 designation preserves one of the quiet fixtures of Collin County's farming country.

McKinney, TX

Built in 1887 for Joe H. and Clara Letson Crouch, this McKinney residence is a fine example of Queen Anne architecture, with an asymmetrical jumble of gables, a turret, a wraparound porch, and richly milled and shingled details. It passed to F. Dudley Perkins in 1906 and to the Martin Moses family in 1920. It stands as one of the town's showpiece Victorian homes.

Stephenville, TX

Tennessee natives Dr. Martin Swan Crow and his wife Mollie Jane Crow settled in Stephenville in 1871, where he built a thriving medical practice and drugstore and both invested heavily in real estate. Remarkably for her era, Mrs. Crow founded the town's first savings and loan and served as a director of a regional railroad. She likely built this Queen Anne cottage around 1893 after her husband's death, its cypress siding and fishscale shingles echoing the family's opera house on the courthouse square.

Stephenville, TX

Built before 1892, this limestone building housed the Erath County National Bank on its ground floor under president Dr. M. S. Crow. At the suggestion of his wife, Mollie Jane Crow, the upper floor became an opera house seating about 400 that hosted plays, dances, and community gatherings until the rise of motion pictures dimmed it by 1920. Its Romanesque style later sheltered other businesses.

Salt Flat, TX

Named for the birds that flocked to its water, Crow Springs was an oasis in the far West Texas desert used by Indigenous peoples for centuries. The Butterfield Overland Mail built a stage relay station here in 1858, though the route soon shifted south toward Fort Davis, and during the Apache wars of the early 1880s Texas Rangers and Buffalo Soldiers of the U.S. 10th Cavalry camped at the springs to keep New Mexico's Apaches from joining the leaders Victorio and Nana. Today the springs have gone dry, the station has crumbled to dust, and the crows are gone.

Crowell, TX

Crowell's schools grew up alongside the town itself, which took root on the West Texas plains in 1891 when Foard County commissioners carved the area into nine school districts. Early settlers pooled resources—Benjamin R. Blankenship helped fund the first schoolhouse—and rebuilt after fire destroyed the original in 1897, earning state accreditation and holding the first graduation by 1908. Depression-era federal programs like the Public Works and Civil Works Administrations helped raise new buildings in the 1930s, and the district produced standout figures like football star Dick Todd, who set state scoring records before playing for Texas A&M and the Washington Redskins.

Crowley, TX

This burial ground began serving the settlers of the Deer Creek area soon after they arrived around 1848, its earliest marked grave that of an eight-year-old boy who died in 1857. Sarah "Sallie" Dunn deeded the land as a public cemetery in 1879, and when the town of Crowley organized along the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad about 1880, the old Deer Creek Cemetery took the new town's name. The grounds hold the pioneers who settled this corner of Tarrant County.

Pasadena, TX

As permanent settlers arrived near Buffalo Bayou in the 1890s, the new town of Pasadena needed a place to bury its dead, and this knoll overlooking Vince's Bayou became its community graveyard in 1906. Renamed Crown Hill after World War I, likely for the nearby Crown Central Refinery, it holds veterans of four American wars and generations of early settlers and community leaders. It also became a resting place for Mexican-American farm families beginning in the 1920s, earning it the name the Mexican Cemetery.

Bethlehem, PA

In 1745, just four years after Moravian settlers founded Bethlehem on the banks of the Lehigh River, this two-story log building opened as the community's first public house. Standing beside the ferry landing on the main road into the young settlement, the Crown Inn became a natural stopping place for travelers, and over the decades it welcomed prominent political and military figures passing through eastern Pennsylvania. When a bridge finally supplanted the old ferry in 1794 the inn's fortunes faded; it closed its doors and was torn down in 1857.

Marble Falls, TX

Backbone Valley's first public building rose slowly between 1859 and 1870 on land donated by the heirs of settler Jefferson Barton, and was named for the Rev. Arter Crownover, whose Methodist preaching opened its doors. The chapel soon doubled as a school, and a cemetery came into use nearby by 1872. Restored to its original appearance, it still serves as a church and community center.

Augusta County, VA

Bored through the Blue Ridge Mountains in the 1850s, the Crozet Tunnel — also called the Blue Ridge Tunnel — was an audacious feat of antebellum engineering led by French-born civil engineer Claudius Crozet for the Blue Ridge Railroad. Hand-drilled and blasted largely by Irish immigrant laborers and enslaved workers through nearly a mile of hard rock, it was, when completed, among the longest railroad tunnels in the United States. The west portal marks where crews working from opposite sides finally met deep inside the mountain near Rockfish Gap.

Austin, TX

Built in 1917 as one of the first homes in Austin's Enfield subdivision, this house rose on land tied to the estate of Texas Governor E.M. Pease, whose granddaughter Carrie Crusemann was a silent partner in the neighborhood's development company. In 1924 newspaper publisher Charles Marsh more than doubled the home's size and reoriented its entrance, giving it its Jacobean Revival character. Its half-timbered gables carry woodcarvings by Peter Mansbendel and ironwork by Fortunat Weigl, both noted Austin craftsmen.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

Crystal Bird Fauset lived here when, in 1938, she won a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and became the first Black woman elected to any state legislature in the United States. A gifted organizer and speaker, she later advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt on race relations within the wartime Office of Civilian Defense. Her career opened doors in electoral politics that had long been barred to Black women.

Crystal City, TX

After the United States entered World War II, the Immigration and Naturalization Service ran a lesser-known internment system alongside the mass removal of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. At Crystal City, a former migratory-labor camp became the nation's largest internment facility and the only one built exclusively for families, holding Japanese, German, and Italian nationals seized in the U.S., Hawaii, and Latin America for possible prisoner exchange. Ringed by a ten-foot barbed-wire fence and guard towers, the compound functioned like a small town of some 700 buildings and averaged 2,800 residents; it did not close until 1948.

Lincoln County, NV

Crystal Spring served as a watering place and campsite on an alternate branch of the Mormon Trail in the mid-1800s, and in 1866 it was named provisional seat of the new Lincoln County. That spring Governor Henry G. Blasdel set out from Carson City with more than twenty people to organize the county, but a harrowing crossing through Death Valley left them starving — one man died and the rest survived on lizards and desert animals before reaching the spring. Blasdel found too few voters to qualify the county, which was finally organized a year later at Hiko.

Straban Township, PA

This monument marks the Confederate Chesapeake Maryland Artillery — Brown's Battery — of Latimer's Battalion in Johnson's Division of Ewell's Corps, Army of Northern Virginia, armed with four 10-pounder Parrott rifles. Marylanders who cast their lot with the South served in units like this one, which fought on the Confederate left during the battle of early July 1863. Gettysburg drew soldiers from across a divided nation, including border-state men fighting far from a home that had stayed in the Union.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the afternoon of July 2, 1863, Brigadier General Joseph B. Kershaw led his South Carolina brigade of McLaws' Division across the Emmitsburg Road toward the Union line near the Rose Farm. The assault carried into some of the fiercest fighting of the second day, on ground remembered for the Peach Orchard and the Wheatfield. This marker fixes the brigade's line of advance.

Kinston, NC

The Confederate ironclad CSS Neuse was built upriver at Whitehall and floated down the Neuse River to Kinston during the Civil War. Plagued by low water and shifting fortunes, she was grounded and burned by her own crew in 1865 to keep her from Union hands. Her recovered remains lie one block north of this marker.