Historic Markers in Texas

Snyder, TX

A delegate to the Texas Secession Convention, William R. Scurry rose from lieutenant colonel of the 4th Texas Cavalry to brigadier general, commanding troops at Val Verde and Glorieta Pass in the 1861-62 New Mexico Campaign and helping retake Galveston in 1863. In the 1864 Red River Campaign he led his brigade through Mansfield and Pleasant Hill before falling at Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas. The county that bears his name and this state marker stand as memorials to Texans who fought for the Confederacy.

Wills Point, TX

A surveyor's error in 1850 placed Van Zandt County's seat on private land, and by 1877 discontent boiled over into a full-blown "county seat war." When Judge Cadwell Walton Raines ordered the records moved from Canton to Wills Point, some 200 armed men marched in protest, and Governor R. B. Hubbard had to send militia to keep the peace. Bloodshed was averted, the records went back to Canton in 1878, and the seat stayed there for good.

Snyder, TX

When Scurry County organized in 1884, W. W. 'Uncle Billy' Nelson became its first sheriff and authorized a tiny 8-by-10-foot frame 'calaboose' for a jail — but he resigned after six months, worn down by unruly cowboys. His successor, T. J. Faught, won the cowhands' respect by quieting a rowdy saloon crowd with a wooden pool cue and, though he never wore a gun, served three terms from 1886 to 1892. A street in the original Snyder town plat was named for him, now 27th Street.

Ft. Stockton, TX

In far West Texas, this native-sandstone courthouse and jail went up in 1883 to bring law and administration to Pecos County. Close by stands the Zero Stone, set in 1859 as the first reference point for local land surveys. Together they mark how order was measured and enforced across the vast, arid frontier.

Brownwood, TX

Brown County was created in 1856 and has been served by four courthouses in succession—beginning with a donated log cabin that was physically moved twice as the county seat shifted, once to settle an 1868 townsite dispute. A combined courthouse and jail built in 1876 burned after only four years, and a Waco firm designed its 1884 replacement. The current Classical Revival courthouse, raised in 1917–18, folded in interior walls and vaults salvaged from the earlier building.

Sherman, TX

Since Grayson County's founding in 1846, its seat of justice has taken every shape from a $232 frame building on bald prairie to a native limestone landmark. Five courthouses came and went in the county's first forty years before the railroad reached Sherman in 1873, bringing better materials and a majestic 1876 courthouse crowned with a clock-and-bell tower. That building burned in 1930, and the Depression delayed its limestone successor until 1936.

Kountze, TX

Since Hardin County was created in 1858, its seat of government has occupied a succession of buildings, beginning with a two-story log structure that burned around 1886 and took the county's early records with it. A frame courthouse followed in 1887—famously built around its safe—then a domed 1905 masonry building of West Texas stone and imported St. Louis brick, and finally a modern facility in 1958. Remarkably, the little 1887 building still stands near the square as law offices.

Palo Pinto, TX

Created in 1856, Palo Pinto County laid out its seat at the geographic center and built a modest $300 wood-frame courthouse the following year, in a town first called Golconda and soon renamed Palo Pinto. A grand sandstone courthouse with a Second Empire clock tower rose in 1882, quarried from local stone and later joined to an annex by an iron bridge. In 1940–1942 those buildings gave way to a WPA-built reinforced-concrete courthouse clad in some of the old sandstone.

San Patricio, TX

Since the 1830s, eight buildings have served as the seat of government for San Patricio County, beginning with a 'Log Courthouse' raised for the San Patricio colony before the county itself was created in 1837. A stone courthouse begun before the Civil War was never finished—neighbors even carried off its stones for their chimneys—and later courthouses came and went by fire and by the 1894 move of the county seat to Sinton. In 1986 a replica of the 1872 courthouse was built on its original site from the old commissioners' specifications.

Houston, TX

Platted in 1907 on land once held by Houston pioneer Obedience Smith, Courtlandt Place was laid out as a gated enclave for the city's rising elite. Its roughly fifteen acres showcase homes by leading early-twentieth-century Texas architects, including Birdsall P. Briscoe, Alfred Finn, and John Staub. The neighborhood was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Navasota, TX

Laid out beside the 1873 townsite of McAlpine Town, this cemetery was established by developer Dugald McAlpine, a Scottish-born settler who helped shape the young community of Courtney. Its oldest documented grave dates to 1873, though older unmarked burials likely predate it. Among those resting here are community founders, descendants of early settlers, and veterans reaching from the Civil War through the Korean War.

Athens, TX

When Henderson County set its permanent boundaries in 1850, voters chose Matthew Cartwright's land for the new county seat of Athens, and this square was set aside as public ground. Before any courthouse rose, judges heard cases—murder, larceny, gambling, assault—beneath a large shady oak on this spot. The first district court term in October 1850 was presided over by Oran M. Roberts, later a Texas Supreme Court justice and governor.

Cove, TX

In 1824, during the era of Mexican colonization, Joseph Lawrence of New York—reputed to have sailed with Jean Lafitte's privateers—settled on a marshland ridge that became the seed of this community. A.B.J. Winfree arrived from Louisiana in 1827 on a land grant, and the settlement around his property came to be called Winfree's Cove, later shortened to Cove. Built first on cattle and later on farming, fishing, and fur trapping, the community incorporated in 1973 to preserve its independence.

Melrose, TX

Named for three spring-fed coves nearby, this East Texas cemetery grew out of a local Methodist congregation after Daniel H. Vail deeded 30 acres for church and school in 1858. The oldest marked grave belongs to five-year-old Moses J. Davis, buried in 1866, though rough native-rock markers may hide older burials. Today the grounds hold 66 marked graves and still serve the surrounding community as a place of rest.

Jacksonville, TX

Founded in 1856 as the Sand Hill Methodist Episcopal Church, South, this East Texas congregation has worshipped continuously for well over a century, relocating twice before settling at its present site in 1911. In its early decades the one-room church doubled as the community school and raised a brush arbor for services in the summer heat. Where many rural churches faded in hard times, this one endured, rebuilding in brick in 1955.

Kaufman, TX

Organized in July 1854 by the Reverend Richard O. Watkins as a Cumberland Presbyterian congregation, this Kaufman church raised its first building the following year, and its first pastor helped found Trinity University. The present sanctuary dates to 1877, and the congregation's name changed with the times — becoming "First Presbyterian" after an 1906 denominational merger and later "Covenant" as it absorbed neighboring congregations. Its long history is written into the town's religious life.

San Antonio, TX

John B. Cover and his wife Virginia donated land in the late 1800s for this family cemetery, where the oldest marked grave dates to 1896. Family members, friends, and veterans rest here, including a man said to have lived to 107. Dr. Ellen C. Cover — a physician and surgeon — later added land and endowed a youth center and scholarship, and Cover descendants still maintain the grounds and records.

Covington, TX

Covington Cemetery grew alongside the plantations of brothers James and Philip Gathings, who moved from Mississippi in the early 1850s with their families and enslaved workers and amassed thousands of acres on the Blackland Prairie. James platted the town of Covington and, with his brother, donated land for a church and the Gathings Male and Female College. The earliest marked grave is a son-in-law killed at the Battle of Yellow Bayou in 1864, whose body James had brought home for reburial.

Bridge City, TX

Completed in 1940, the Cow Bayou Swing Bridge is one of only a few center-bearing swing bridges still standing on Texas highways. Built as the final link in State Highway 87 — the 'Hug-the-Coast Highway' from Orange to Brownsville — its 806-foot span pivots on a central concrete pier, opening for boats in about ten minutes by electric motor. The bridge gave its name to Bridge City, and in the 2000s citizens rallied to preserve rather than replace it.

Hondo, TX

In January 1866 the Texas Hill Country was still contested ground between settlers and Native Americans resisting the loss of their hunting grounds. Three young men from near D'Hanis — August Rothe, George Miller, and twelve-year-old Hubert Weynand — camped on Hondo Creek to gather stray livestock when they were attacked. Miller was killed, Weynand was captured and never seen again, and Rothe escaped to tell the story, later recorded by frontier chronicler A.J. Sowell.

Dublin, TX

In 1871 Jesse Van donated land for a community cemetery serving the Cow Creek settlement, which supported a school and two churches. Its most notable burial was William Carroll Crawford, the last surviving signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, whose remains the state reinterred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin in 1936. Among some sixty-five unidentified graves, the earliest recorded burial dates to 1874.

Brady, TX

Legend gives this burial ground its name from a cowboy who died passing through and may have been its first grave, but the record begins with four-year-old William Hughes in 1882. His parents, W.G.S. and Sarah Hughes, donated the land — and an additional acre for a school — that year, with Sarah and family deeding nearly five more acres to a cemetery association in 1932. The grounds preserve the heritage of the Deep Creek community on the Central Texas frontier.

Anson, TX

In 1885 a dance for cowboys and ladies at the Star Hotel in Anson so inspired visiting writer Larry Chittenden that he penned "The Cowboys' Christmas Ball," a poem naming real people and ranches of 1880s Jones County. Revived in the 1930s, the tradition drew national fame, even reaching the White House lawn, and settled into Pioneer Hall built with WPA help. Held every year with grand marches, waltzes, and period dress, it keeps a piece of frontier Texas alive.

Dallas, TX

Cox Cemetery holds more than 400 marked graves and perhaps 100 unmarked burials, its oldest stone from 1848 marking a two-month-old child. Absalom Humbard, who came to Texas after being wounded and imprisoned during the Civil War, permanently set the ground aside for burials near White Rock Lake, where it served pioneer families—Glovers, Lavenders, Coxes, Donagheys and others who had arrived from across the United States and from Germany. It also served the vanished railroad communities of Fisher (later Calhoun) and Reinhardt before they were absorbed into Dallas.

Canton, TX

Robert K. Gibbs and his family settled this Van Zandt County land in the early 1850s, and the earliest documented grave — an infant Gibbs daughter — dates to 1853. When Robert Daniel Cox acquired the property in 1880, he opened the small family plot as a community cemetery, which grew through later land additions. Some of the unmarked graves are believed to hold enslaved people, and five generations of the Cox family rest here.

Sidney vicinity, TX

William Driscol Cox brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1872 and settled a 300-acre ranch here, teaching the first school in nearby Sidney and serving as Comanche County sheriff. The cemetery began with the 1876 burial of his infant daughter Mary Jane, and in 1886 Cox donated the ground to a Methodist mission as a public burial place. Generations of the Cox family and their kin have tended it ever since.

Groesbeck, TX

Arkansas native Obediah Cox came home from the Civil War in 1864 and settled with his wife Angeline in the Ferguson Prairie community of Limestone County. When Angeline died in 1870 he buried her here, the cemetery's earliest marked grave, later marrying her sister Eliza and adding to the family lands. The burial ground grew to hold Civil War veterans, Masons, and members of the Order of the Eastern Star among the Cox, Glover, Yarbrough, and other pioneer families, and since the 1880s their descendants have gathered here each year for a memorial reunion.

Orange, TX

Orange grew from an 1820s settlement on a bend of the Sabine River into a booming lumber town, and this shingle-style Victorian home reflects that early-20th-century prosperity. Thomas C.B. Cox, an Alabama-born civil engineer for the Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company, hired noted local builder Daniel Webster Howell to raise the house around 1910, complete with fish-scale skirting, twelve-foot ceilings, and white-oak floors. Later families, including a postwar Chamber of Commerce president, added a second story and other rooms as the home passed through generations.

Dallas, TX

Farmers Howard and Mary Jane Cox bought 189 acres of this Dallas-area land in 1878 and put up a first house here before 1884. Around 1900 they built the surviving home — family tradition holds the older structure was folded into it — a Queen Anne blend of tall windows and dormers under a dominant hipped roof. Two of their sons ran the Cox Brothers Dairy on the property from 1931 into the early 1950s.

Needmore, TX

On the vast, dry expanse of the Staked Plains, this brackish salt lake was a rare and welcome source of water for Comanche bands, buffalo hunters, and cattle drives alike. Artifacts along its shore mark it as a favored Comanche camp, and after the 1874 Battle of Adobe Walls broke Comanche resistance, hide hunters swept the region and all but exterminated the southern buffalo herd. From the 1880s the lake watered stock on the immense XIT Ranch and, later, cattle bound for the railroad at Bovina and the markets to the north.

Weslaco, TX

In February 1945, U.S. Marines fought to seize the small but strategic Pacific island of Iwo Jima, and Weslaco's own Corporal Harlon Block was among the six men who raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi—an act frozen into one of the most famous photographs of World War II. Days later, after his squad leader was killed, Block took command but was himself killed within hours. His remains came home to Weslaco in 1949 and were later moved to the Iwo Jima monument in Harlingen.

Fredericksburg, TX

German immigrants who reached Fredericksburg in the late 1840s spread into the surrounding hills and, in 1878, raised a sturdy native-limestone schoolhouse that opened to about forty children. The land came from farmer Mathias Schmidt, who by local tradition won the privilege in a foot race. Over the years the building did double and triple duty, sheltering a teacherage, a post office, a Lutheran congregation, and the community band before merging into the Fredericksburg school district in 1957.

Jacksonville, TX

Founded in 1891 at the Shiloh Schoolhouse by members of a nearby Baptist congregation, this East Texas church cycled through several names before settling on Craft Baptist Church of Christ in 1899. For decades its members met only once or twice a month — a rhythm dictated by the hard task of keeping full-time pastors in rural communities — before expanding to weekly worship in the 1950s. Unusually tied to education, the church hosted preaching students from nearby Jacksonville College and sent its own pastors into seminaries, mission fields, and denominational leadership.

Crane, TX

Carved from Tom Green County in 1887 and formally organized in 1927, Crane County honors William Carey Crane, a Baptist minister who served as president of Baylor University from 1863 to 1885. The long gap between creation and organization reflects how sparsely settled far West Texas remained until the oil era. The county seat, Crane, carries his name as well.

Conroe, TX

Nickolas Crane came to Texas from Alabama in 1848 and, after Confederate service in the Civil War, built this large cabin in 1867 on his land claim, hand-adzing split pine logs smooth on the interior and topping it with a cypress-board roof. The Tharp family moved and restored the cabin in the 1970s, preserving a rare example of post-war frontier homebuilding.

Crane, TX

Facing a booming West Texas oil town, the Crane Board of Trustees in 1947 proposed more than a million dollars to build a modern high school campus. They hired architect Sylvan Blum Haynes—known for schools, homes, and the Lubbock County Courthouse—whose firm designed a horizontal buff-brick building crowned by a crenellated entrance tower. Opened in 1949, it stands as Haynes' final Art Deco design.

Crane, TX

William Carey Crane was a Virginia-born Baptist minister and educator who came to Confederate Texas in 1863 to lead Baylor University—a post he held for 22 years, spending his own money to keep its doors open while many Texas colleges closed. He also helped found the Texas State Teachers Association and championed public-school reform. Crane County was later named in his honor.

Austin, TX

Completed in 1960, this three-unit building was commissioned by University of Texas English professor Thomas Cranfill as a home and studio for his partner, photographer and author Hans Beacham. It was designed by Harwell Hamilton Harris, a leading figure in American regional modernism who had directed UT's School of Architecture in the early 1950s. Its board-and-batten redwood siding, exposed concrete block, and light-filled open plan reflect Harris's belief in honest materials and a close bond between a building and its landscape.

Conroe, TX

In 1933 the Madeley wells, drilled by Standard Oil of Kansas, came in on fire and threatened to destroy the entire Conroe oil field, sending flames as high as 150 feet as crews battled for three months with water, mud, and explosives. Humble Oil finally quelled the inferno with a directional well never before tried on the Texas Gulf Coast, pumping mud into the blowout crater. Crater Lake, born of those explosions, still marks the site.

Crawford, TX

Crawford took root in the 1850s near Tonk Crossing, in country the Tonkawa had long ranged, at the meeting of two frontier trade routes. When the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad bypassed the original townsite in 1881, residents simply picked up and moved to the new line, and the relocated town flourished with churches, a cotton gin, and a grain mill before incorporating in 1897. For most of the twentieth century it was a quiet agricultural center—until 1999, when George W. Bush bought a nearby ranch that his 2000 election turned into the "Western White House."

Crawford, TX

Crawford Cemetery began with grief: a chiseled rockpile reading "H. Kee" marks the 1876 grave of an infant boy whose family had newly settled the area. Neighbor Uriah Tadlock, a Civil War veteran who bought land along the Tonk Creek Road cattle trail in 1870, offered a pasture for the burial and set aside three acres as a community cemetery, tradition holding that no one was ever to pay for a resting place. Tadlock and his wife Mary Ann helped build early Crawford—houses, the Methodist church, and a school—and are buried here among the pioneers who developed this corner of McLennan County.

Crawford, TX

Schooling in the Crawford area began in the 1870s at Old Crawford, or Tonk Crossing, where teachers like John H. Gouldy and Dr. J.B. Cranfill taught in a one-room house that doubled as church and meeting hall. When the town moved to follow the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe railroad in the 1880s, a schoolhouse was among its first buildings, and the merging of a free school with private Crawford College in 1886 laid the foundation for the public district formed in 1894. Over the decades rural schools consolidated in, a separate school served African-American children until integration in 1965, and long-serving superintendents gave the district lasting stability.

Grand Saline, TX

Creagleville took shape in the 1840s along the Dallas-Shreveport Road, a major route across northern Van Zandt County, and was named for German immigrant Henry Creagle, who settled here about 1847. A school appeared by 1854, and the farming community soon gained a church, cotton gin, gristmill, and cemetery. As families moved away the village faded — its school consolidated in 1941, its church closed in 1991 — but the cemetery, holding more than fifty Civil War veterans, endures.

Junction, TX

Creed Taylor took up arms in the Texas War for Independence, marching from Gonzales to Bexar in 1835 in the campaign that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio. In 1836 he served as a scout and courier during the decisive year of the revolution. His name endures in the Hill Country as one of the frontier soldiers who won Texas its independence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.