Historic Markers in Texas

New Braunfels, TX

Funded by an act President Woodrow Wilson signed in 1915, this post office rose during the sweeping early-20th-century modernization of the U.S. Postal System — parcel post, airmail, savings, and expanded rural delivery. Built of Round Rock limestone and regional brick, it served New Braunfels for seventy years, selling war bonds and handling ration books during the Great Depression and World War II. After the post office moved in 1985, the building was renovated to house a restaurant named for Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo.

Corpus Christi, TX

On September 14, 1919, an undetected hurricane that had gathered for two weeks in the Gulf struck the resort city of Corpus Christi. Its winds were only moderate, but the storm surge was catastrophic, driving tides above twelve feet that hurled debris, oil, and thousands of bales of cotton into downtown and swept away nearly all of North Beach. Some 357 people died in the region, most of them in Corpus Christi, with property losses of $20 million.

Graham, TX

Completed in 1921 to a design by Dallas architect C.H. Leinbach, the Young County jail rose three stories in concrete and brick, blending Commercial style with Prairie School touches. It housed the sheriff's family on the first floor, cells above, and even an indoor gallows, and held prisoners awaiting trial for over half a century — among them men tied to the notorious 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery in nearby Cisco. After 1983 it found new life supporting a community crisis center.

Port Isabel, TX

The federal government has kept a coastal installation at Point Isabel since 1852, and this 1923 building—raised on wood and concrete pilings with barracks, attic, and lookout tower—was the third permanent structure on the site. It was one of nine stations strung along the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to the Texas-Mexico border. From here the U.S. Coast Guard patrolled the coastline and carried out sea rescues.

Gilmer, TX

Completed in 1926, Gilmer's post office was raised by an Alabama contractor using both his own crew and local Upshur County workers, and dressed in dignified Georgian Revival brick and limestone. For sixty-five years it handled the town's mail before a new facility took over in 1991. Rescued from vacancy by local groups, the handsome federal building found new life as a community history museum.

Athens, TX

Henderson County recognized its need for a jail as early as 1850, building first a log "calaboose" and then successors that fire and decay repeatedly claimed. Completed in 1925 to designs overseen by Dallas architect H.A. Overbeck, with iron bars and locks from the Pauly Jail Company, this two-story American Gothic Revival building held prisoners until 1991. It later sheltered county records and now houses the county historical commission.

McKinney, TX

Collin County was formed in 1846, and after a sparsely attended 1848 election held in bad weather, McKinney became its permanent county seat. A limestone Victorian courthouse with a mansard roof rose on the square in the 1870s, but by the mid-1920s it was overcrowded and failing. A sweeping 1927 renovation stripped the mansard roof, added a story, and recast the building in classical revival style—the 'Temple of Justice' that served the county until 1979.

Denton, TX

Outgrowing an 1877 red-brick building, Denton commissioned this Spanish Renaissance city hall from the Fort Worth firm Van Slyke and Woodruff, dedicating it in October 1927 with Governor Dan Moody in attendance. Reminiscent of South Texas missions, the white-brick building with its arched windows and tiled roof also housed the fire station, its planned belfry meant to hold the alarm bell. After city offices moved out in 1969, it served as the Firehouse Theatre and later the police department, and was long famous for its elaborate annual Christmas displays.

Montague, TX

Erected in 1927 by the Southern Prison Company of San Antonio, this was the third building to serve as the Montague County Jail. It combined function and domestic life in one structure: living quarters for the jailer and his family on the first floor and six cells above. Serving until 1980, its entry portico, stone cornice, and cast-stone details reflect the civic architecture of small-town Texas in the 1920s.

Turkey, TX

The small Panhandle town of Turkey boomed in the mid-1920s, sitting where two early auto highways — the Ozark Trail and the coast-to-coast Bankhead Highway — met the new railroad. As automobiles multiplied, the Phillips Petroleum Company poured investment into the town, culminating on July 27, 1928, in this Phillips 66 station, the company's first in Texas. Built in Tudor Revival style with brick, a steep roof, and "Phillips 66" glass globes, it was designed to blend into the residential street while fueling a community on the move.

Denison, TX

When Texas and Oklahoma jointly built a free highway bridge over the Red River in 1931, the toll-bridge company that operated the nearby Colbert Bridge won a federal injunction to keep it closed. Texas Governor Ross Sterling complied, but Oklahoma's William Murray ordered the barricades torn down and traffic flowing—prompting Texas Rangers to guard the southern approach. The standoff eased when the injunction was suspended, and the Rangers opened the bridge on Labor Day.

Austin, TX

Completed in 1933 on a public square platted four decades earlier, this Italian Renaissance–style building was the finest public work of Austin native Hugo Kuehne, founding dean of the University of Texas School of Architecture. It showcased the city's best craftsmen — ironworker Fortunat Weigl, wood-carver Peter Mansbendel, and fresco artist Harold "Bubi" Jessen. It served as Austin's main public library until 1979.

Weatherford, TX

In the depths of the Great Depression, Weatherford voters passed a 1933 bond to build a combined city hall and fire station—and the project put unemployed townspeople to work. Construction began at once on land long set aside for civic use, and the art deco brick building, with its corbelled pilasters and stone trim, was dedicated in January 1934.

Pampa, TX

By the 1930s Pampa was a Panhandle boomtown, its population swelled after oil was discovered in the area in 1926. To serve the growing community, the federal Works Progress Administration built this post office in 1933–34, its Spanish Renaissance Revival styling—tile roof, arcaded loggia, rounded windows, and carved stonework—typical of the ambitious public architecture of the New Deal.

Alamo, TX

On March 14, 1940, a train struck a truck carrying more than 40 farmworkers at this crossing near Alamo, killing 34 people ranging in age from ten to forty-eight—the deadliest highway accident in Texas history. A neighboring citrus packing plant became the base for frantic rescue efforts. The disaster shook the Rio Grande Valley and spurred new attention to railroad-crossing safety and the treatment of agricultural laborers.

Corpus Christi, TX

After decades of hurricane devastation, Corpus Christi finally began building its seawall in 1939, paid for by remitted state taxes from seven South Texas counties. Contractor Jay Depuy drove creosoted pilings deep into the bay, dredged new land into the water, and raised a 14-foot reinforced-concrete wall with steps down to the sea. Completed in 1941 and now a designated Texas Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, it served as both a storm barrier and a seaside amphitheater for war-bond rallies and civic celebrations.

Corpus Christi, TX

In June 1966, some 700 melon pickers in Starr County struck for wages that met the federal minimum and for humane conditions, aided by organizer Eugene Nelson and local reformers Margil Sanchez and Lucio Galvan. Meeting resistance, they set out on a 380-mile march from Rio Grande City to Austin, gathering food, lodging, and supporters town by town—including a rally of more than 800 in Corpus Christi. The march culminated on Labor Day with over 10,000 people at the state capitol.

El Paso, TX

Texas Western College in El Paso — now UTEP — was the first college in a southern state to integrate, and under coach Don Haskins it recruited Black players when many southern schools still refused to. In the 1965-66 season the Miners went 23-1, battled through overtime thrillers in the NCAA tournament, and in the title game started five African American players against an all-white Kentucky team, winning 72-65. Haskins simply said he was playing his best players.

Jefferson, TX

This finely built structure, distinguished by its fanlight transoms, dates to Jefferson's heyday as a bustling inland river port, when steamboats connected the town to the wider world. In those boom years it housed the Kahan Saloon, one of the many businesses that thrived along the waterfront trade.

Mercedes, TX

This monument, dedicated in 1960, honors the more than a thousand men of the 1st North Dakota Infantry who camped in the lower Rio Grande Valley during the tense Mexican Border service of 1916-1917. First organized in Dakota Territory in 1883, the regiment served from the Spanish-American War through the Philippines, France in World War I, and the Pacific in World War II—where, as the 164th Infantry, it became the first U.S. Army unit to go on the offensive, at Guadalcanal in 1942.

Saratoga, TX

In 1901—the same year Spindletop announced the Texas oil age—Ben Hooks and his brothers brought in the first oil well in Hardin County at a depth of 995 feet just north of this site. The strike sparked a boom town, first called "New Sour Lake" and later renamed Saratoga after the famous New York spa resort. It was one of the gushers that turned the Big Thicket country into an early frontier of the petroleum industry.

Victoria, TX

After German U-boats sank its oil tankers, Mexico declared war on the Axis in 1942 and negotiated to train a fighter squadron in Texas. The 201st Fighter Squadron of the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force—the "Aztec Eagles"—brought 300 volunteers to Foster Field near Victoria in 1944 before deploying to the Philippines in 1945. Flying with the U.S. Fifth Air Force, the unit carried out 96 combat missions against Japanese forces.

San Antonio, TX

Spaniards first explored and named this area in 1691, and colonial settlement took hold in May 1718 with the founding of Mission San Antonio de Valero—later known as the Alamo—beside the presidio San Antonio de Béxar. Renamed San Fernando de Béxar in 1731 when it became Texas's first municipality, the settlement kept the name "San Antonio" and served as the province's capital from 1772 to 1824. The city has lived under nine governments, a heritage celebrated at HemisFair '68 on its 250th anniversary.

Brackettville, TX

Activated at Fort Clark in February 1943, the 2nd Cavalry Division brought together the legendary 9th and 10th Buffalo Soldier regiments with newer Black cavalry units, making it the U.S. Army's only all-Black cavalry division. More than 5,000 horses trained here alongside M3 Stuart tanks, even featuring in a wartime newsreel, as troopers endured hard drills and the racial injustices of a segregated army. Deemed unnecessary by the War Department, the division was dismounted, shipped to North Africa, and inactivated in March 1944.

Carson County, TX

On the treeless High Plains of the Texas Panhandle, the survival of a single planted tree was no small thing. This marker recalls Thomas Cree, an early settler celebrated for nurturing a young tree in a country where wind, drought, and grass fires killed most seedlings. In 1965 the Men's Garden Clubs of America, meeting in Amarillo, paused their national convention to honor his small green act of faith in the land.

Temple, TX

In the decades after Appomattox, Confederate veterans gathered to keep the memory of their service alive, and in 1906 the survivors of Hood's Texas Brigade held their 42nd reunion in Temple. The men met at the First Baptist Church, rode in one of Temple's first automobile parades, heard a memorial ceremony led by the brigade's original chaplain, and closed with a rousing chorus of 'Dixie.' Founded in 1872, the veterans' association held reunions until 1934.

Abilene, TX

The 45th Infantry Division — the 'Thunderbirds,' drawn from National Guard units in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma — was among the first divisions called into federal service in 1940 and relocated to Camp Barkeley near Abilene in early 1941. Finding the camp little more than a tent city on undrained prairie, the soldiers nicknamed it 'Camp Smokey Okie' and trained hard before shipping out through North Africa to Europe. Across 511 days of combat in Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany they earned eight Medals of Honor and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945; the division was recalled for the Korean War, where it suffered further heavy losses.

Hallettsville, TX

On New Year's Day 1863, Confederate forces under Gen. John B. Magruder retook the port of Galveston from Union occupiers in a combined land-and-water assault. Fifty years later, in 1914, the veterans and families of Lavaca County raised this monument to the local men who fought there and elsewhere in the Civil War. Its roll of names, from privates to generals, preserves the memory of a community's wartime service.

Canadian, TX

During the frenzied slaughter of the southern buffalo herds in the mid-1870s, two supply trails rose across the Texas Panhandle to feed hide hunters and their markets. Around 1876 Charles Rath blazed a road from Dodge City hauling powder, lead, whiskey, and staples toward the Double Mountains, though the best hunting was gone within two years. A second route forged by Ed Jones and Joe Plummer from Kansas to Fort Elliott outlasted the hunt, becoming first a freight road and finally a cattle trail.

Panhandle, TX

This Panhandle ranch takes its name from Dixon Creek, where the famed buffalo hunter and scout Billy Dixon dug the first High Plains home in 1874. Founded in 1882 by an English cattle company backed by Cunard steamship money, the spread was fenced in 1884 with barbed wire hauled from the railhead at Dodge City. Cattleman Burk Burnett bought it in 1903 and, two years later, hosted President Theodore Roosevelt for a celebrated wolf hunt.

Guthrie, TX

In 1868 Samuel "Burk" Burnett bought 100 head of cattle carrying the "6666" brand and launched a ranching dynasty, moving his operations west into King County around 1900 and registering the famous Four Sixes brand at the county courthouse in 1903. From headquarters at Guthrie, Burnett imported purebred Hereford and Durham bulls whose offspring won livestock shows nationwide, and the ranch's quarter horses became renowned across the Southwest. Now spanning 275,000 acres and still run by Burnett's descendants, the 6666 remains a working monument to the cattle frontier.

Spring Branch, TX

After building a fortune in South Texas oil and gas, World War I veteran L.A. Nordan and his wife Pearl established the sprawling 711 Ranch along the Guadalupe River in 1949, stitching together dozens of parcels rooted in Republic of Texas land grants once held by patriots, immigrants, and Mexican Texans. The Nordans built a world-class operation famous for prize Santa Gertrudis cattle and Columbia sheep, while championing conservation, wildlife, and the preservation of the property's old structures and cemeteries. Portions were later absorbed into Canyon Lake Reservoir and, eventually, a modern subdivision.

Anson vicinity, TX

Established by the U.S. Army in 1851, Fort Phantom Hill was one of a chain of frontier posts meant to shield settlers pushing into West Texas. Its regular garrison lasted only until 1854, when the fort was abandoned and burned, but the site kept serving the frontier—as a stop on the Southern Overland Mail, a sub-post of Fort Griffin, and even a temporary county seat.

Lewisville, TX

On September 11, 2001, hijacked airliners struck the World Trade Center towers in New York, and hundreds of firefighters and police officers died rushing in to save others as the buildings collapsed. This memorial honors those first responders and stands among the thousands of local tributes raised across the country in the years afterward. It ties a Texas community to a day that reshaped the nation.

San Antonio, TX

In the spring of 1867, the newly formed 9th Cavalry — Buffalo Soldiers, Black troopers under white officers — assembled at San Pedro Springs, pitching a "canvas city" that spread across several acres just north of the San Antonio Arsenal. From here the regiment deployed to the chain of West Texas forts, serving on the frontier with a discipline the local press grudgingly rated superior to white units. Their men would earn numerous Medals of Honor before the regiment's lineage carried forward into modern armored and airborne units.

Hearne, TX

The Methodists of Hearne organized their congregation in November 1870, in the raw years of Reconstruction, with the Rev. Horace Bishop as their first pastor. A church rose on this site in 1885 under the Rev. Seth Ward, who would later become the first native Texan elevated to bishop in the Methodist church. The present edifice was built in 1931 and renovated in 1965, and the congregation—renamed Grace United Methodist Church—marked a full century of Methodism in Hearne in 1970.

Brownfield, TX

In 1903, landowners platted Gomez in the center of then-unorganized Terry County, secured a post office named for Cuban independence patriot Máximo Gómez, dug a public well, and lured settlers and merchants. It was the county's first inhabited townsite and hoped to become the county seat—an honor that went instead to nearby Brownfield in 1904. The post office closed in 1926 and the school in 1941, leaving a church, a few businesses, and the old cemetery to carry the name.

Reagan, TX

Kentucky-born W. F. Williams met Sam Houston in Tennessee and joined his army, fighting for Texas independence at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. He later settled in Falls County in 1857, farming, ranching, and partnering in a general store. He raised ten children and lived until 1878.

Clarksville, TX

William Becknell of Missouri is remembered as the "Father of the Santa Fe Trail," opening that trade route from the United States into Spanish territory in 1821. In 1835 he settled with his family on Becknell's Prairie in present-day Red River County, where—according to tradition—David Crockett visited them on his way to the Alamo, and Becknell himself fought in the 1836 Texas War for Independence. The earliest part of this house dates to his family's settlement, later enlarged, relocated, and restored in 1968.

Archer City, TX

The notorious Missouri outlaw Jesse James found a haven in Archer City at a house built for Allen H. Parmer, his Confederate war comrade and brother-in-law who managed the Stone Land and Cattle Company. When hunted for train and bank robberies, Jesse and his brother Frank would lie low at the Parmer home. Jesse was killed in 1882, but Frank kept visiting, while Parmer himself raised a family of respected citizens.

Belton, TX

This memorial recalls what the Civil War did to Texas schooling. Baylor University — including the 'Female Department' that became Mary Hardin-Baylor — had run at Independence for fifteen years when war came in 1861, and it suffered along with education statewide: state school funds stopped, many of the 1860's 2,416 college students marched off as soldiers, and numerous of Texas's 25 colleges closed. In the classrooms that remained, the old, the disabled, and women taught children who wrote on slates or in smoothed sand for want of paper.

Granger, TX

Designed by architect William Flick and built in the early 1920s, this craftsman-and-prairie-style bungalow was home to A. A. Spacek, a Granger grocer, banker, and merchant who also served as the town's postmaster and mayor. Well connected in Texas politics, he was tied to Governor Dan Moody and befriended a young Lyndon B. Johnson, who nicknamed him "Double A." The low-gabled house reflects the popular architectural tastes of its day.

Alvarado, TX

Around 1877 Alanson Asbury Head and his wife Susanna—known affectionately as Uncle Ben and Aunt Sukie—built a two-story home here and terraced some 300 acres into orchards, vineyards, and berry patches. As their farm prospered they gave two acres in 1903 for the Head Chapel Methodist Church and two more in 1908 for the Bethany Rest Cemetery, where they were later buried side by side.

Graham, TX

A. B. Medlan settled this Young County farm in 1855 and built his home from brick made on the land itself. A Texas Ranger as well as a church leader and builder, he also served the young county as treasurer and commissioner. The house was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1964.

Beeville, TX

This early-twentieth-century Baroque-style home was built in 1906 by Jane Field Jones, a philanthropist who founded a local school and teacherage and was the widow of Captain A.C. Jones, remembered as the "Father of Beeville." With its eight fireplaces, hardwood floors, and large formal rooms, the house long served as a gathering place for Texas leaders, including governors, and has remained in the family's hands.

Kerrville, TX

Kerrville's Schreiner family shaped the Hill Country as ranchers and merchants, and this house began in 1897 as a wedding gift from Charles A. Schreiner to his son. It later passed to a grandson and was expanded in 1927 with a second story, arched porch, and tile roof by noted San Antonio architect Alfred Giles in a Spanish-influenced style. The home stands as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark and a monument to one family's regional influence.

Crockett, TX

Built in 1835 on a large land grant from Mexico, the Gossett home followed the classic southern plan with a separate kitchen out back. Its most storied moment came early in 1836, when former Tennessee neighbor Colonel David Crockett camped with his company by the nearby spring for a night on his way to the Alamo. Owner A. E. Gossett had come, like Crockett, from the American South to the Texas frontier on the eve of revolution.

Alto, TX

Circuit-riding preachers reached this community by 1845, and the Rev. Andrew Cummings formally organized the congregation in 1852 as part of the new Rusk circuit. Meeting first in a schoolhouse and worshiping in a succession of buildings donated and designed by local families, the church grew into a full-time station and in 1960 took the name of Bishop A. Frank Smith, who began his ministry here.

Dallas, TX

The A.H. Belo Corporation grew from a small firm that launched the Galveston Daily News in 1842, when Texas was still a republic, and began issuing the invaluable Texas Almanac in 1857. Alfred Horatio Belo bought the company in 1876 and in 1885 founded the Dallas Morning News, entrusting it to the young G.B. Dealey, who would become a legend of Texas journalism. The firm moved to Dallas in 1923 and later expanded into radio and television, including WFAA.

Slidell, TX

In the 1850s A. H. 'Sevier' Fortenberry brought his family from Arkansas into what was then raw Texas wilderness, farming and raising stock while joining his neighbors to fend off raids on the scattered settlements. On October 30, 1868, he was intercepted and killed by Indians as he rode to join a defensive posse, and was laid to rest in Denton County's Pollard Cemetery. He is remembered as likely the last person killed in the Indian conflicts of this vicinity.

Round Rock, TX

Swedish immigrant Anders Johan Anderson built this Folk Victorian house in 1908–09, moving in from his nearby farm with two daughters after his first wife's death; he later married Carolina Lindquist, and the family kept the home until 1963. Its fishscale shingles and classical columns reflect the prosperity of Round Rock at a time when the town was a mercantile hub for the area's Swedish community.

Waco, TX

In 1875 Professor A. J. Moore of Paul Quinn College, troubled by the lack of quality schooling for Waco's Black children, began teaching small groups in his home. The effort grew into Waco's first school for Black youth, moving from a repurposed frame hospital building into a brick schoolhouse in 1923 and taking Moore's name. Over nearly a century it graduated more than 4,000 students before closing in 1971, sending alumni into medicine, law, education, and countless other fields.

O'Donnell, TX

Farmer-rancher A. J. Warren helped organize Lynn County in 1903 and, in 1925, built this two-story brick-and-concrete building to house the newly chartered First National Bank. Competition drove a merger and the bank's closure within a year, after which the building served a succession of stores and offices until the city acquired it and opened the O'Donnell Museum here in 1974.

Edgewood, TX

Adolphus Lane Spradlin came to Texas from Indiana as a boy in 1875 and, in 1898, built this dogtrot cabin of hand-hewn logs on land in the Van Zandt County community of Small. He and his wife Lee Ann, of Cherokee ancestry, farmed there until 1909, when he sold out and moved to Edgewood to run a cotton gin and serve 22 years as justice of the peace. The Sims, Vines, and Simmons families later called the cabin home.

Houston, TX

New Orleans native Albert M. Armand, a clerk for a Houston plumbing-supply firm, bought this Avondale lot in 1911 and built a two-story Arts and Crafts home with a wraparound porch and full-height wood columns. He lived here only two years before selling, and the house passed through a string of early owners. Its knee-bracketed eaves and gabled entry portico still mark the character of a growing streetcar-era neighborhood.

Brownfield, TX

A. M. Brownfield arrived in newly settled Terry County as a rancher in 1900 and helped anchor the community that took his family's name, organizing the Brownfield State Bank in 1905. In 1928 he built this Spanish Colonial–style residence of concrete and clay, deliberately fireproofed after an earlier family home burned in 1915. The house was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1985.

Jefferson, TX

This early-twentieth-century cottage was built for Angus Mezappa Urquhart, grandson of Allen Urquhart, one of the founders of the river town of Jefferson. Its Eastlake styling shows in the wraparound porch with turned balustrade and spindle frieze and the jig-cut bargeboards, hallmarks of the ornamental Victorian woodwork popular in the period. The house was later designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Georgetown, TX

Built in 1912 for lumber executive Alexander W. Sillure and his wife Eva, this house showcased the very product its owner sold. As general manager and vice president of the Belford Lumber Company, Sillure supervised his own home's construction and drafted plans for many other Georgetown residences. Its full-width porch and broad eaves reflect the American Foursquare and Prairie School styles popular in early twentieth-century America.

Galveston, TX

Built in 1895 for lumber magnate A. Wilkins Miller, this Victorian cottage reflects the Gilded Age fortunes made in Texas timber. As president of one of the state's largest lumber companies, Miller drove the growth of the southeast Texas timber industry and the rail lines that carried its product. The home's sawn brackets, stained glass, and bay windows mark the era's decorative taste.

San Benito, TX

When Albanus Clemens Purvis came from Ohio to the Rio Grande Valley seeking better health, San Benito was little more than a town on paper with no Anglo-American residents. He became its first justice of the peace, sold real estate, and farmed, while his daughters taught the town's first school in 1907 and served as an early postmaster. In 1911 the former mill owner built this house, which has remained in his family's hands ever since.