Westward Expansion

Brownfield, TX

Brownfield began in 1903 as a promoter's gamble on the open plains of Terry County, laid out by developers W. G. Hardin and A. F. Small—famously using only a hundred feet of wire to measure a townsite out of raw pasture. To draw settlers they offered a free lot to every voter in the county, and a store, hotel, and school quickly followed. In 1904 the fledgling town narrowly beat neighboring Gomez for the county seat, securing its future.

Caldwell, TX

Laid out in 1840 by surveyor George B. Erath on the Old San Antonio Road, Caldwell was named for Mathew 'Old Paint' Caldwell, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The site had already drawn San Jacinto veteran Lewis L. Chiles, who ran a nearby trading post. When Burleson County formed in 1846 the town became its permanent seat, and rail lines in 1890 and 1912 made it a major agricultural shipping center.

Caldwell, TX

Caldwell was founded in 1840 by Lewis L. Chiles, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, and named for Mathew 'Old Paint' Caldwell, an Indian fighter and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. It served as county seat of Milam County in 1845 and has been the seat of Burleson County since 1846. The town is home to the Burleson County Fair.

Canyon, TX

Surveyed on Christmas Day 1887 by L. G. Conner and named for nearby Palo Duro Canyon, Canyon rose against the Panhandle's snow, sandstorms, and grasshopper plagues. Early settlers strung the first telephone line on barbed-wire fence posts, and the arrival of the Santa Fe Railroad in 1898 made the town a cattle-shipping powerhouse that claimed some of the largest shipments in the world. In 1910 West Texas State University opened here, and town and school have grown side by side ever since.

Cedar Hill, TX

Settlers drawn to a high prairie hilltop founded Cedar Hill in the late 1840s, when this was still the frontier edge of a young Texas. Its early economy served the surrounding farms until a disastrous tornado in 1856 checked its growth, and the arrival of the railroad in 1882 revived it. In the late twentieth century the old farm town gave way to suburban Dallas.

Clarksville, TX

Clarksville was incorporated on December 29, 1837, during the days of the Republic of Texas, and named in honor of James Clark, who had settled nearby in 1834. It grew into one of the earliest established towns of Northeast Texas.

Columbus, TX

Around Christmas 1821, the Kuykendall brothers and Daniel Gilleland settled at an old Indian campground on the Mexico-to-Sabine trail, at a spot Stephen F. Austin had already marked as promising. Austin and the Baron de Bastrop surveyed the land in 1823, making this the oldest surveyed and platted Anglo-American town in Texas, home to many of Austin's "Old 300" colonists. Burned by the retreating Texas Army in 1836 to deny it to Santa Anna, the town rose again after the victory at San Jacinto and was replatted in 1837.

Crandall, TX

Named for Methodist minister C.F. Crandall, who arrived from Indiana in 1877 and bought 1,800 acres, the town took off when the Texas Trunk Line Railroad built east from Dallas in 1880. Crandall gave a bonus for rail service and became the first postmaster; churches, schools, stores, and banks soon followed as the town grew into an agricultural center.

Dallas, TX

Dallas began in 1841 as a single cabin on the Trinity River, where pioneer John Neely Bryan hoped river navigation would build a city. Instead it was the railroads — the Houston and Texas Central in 1872 and the Texas and Pacific the next year — that turned the young county seat into a commercial powerhouse. By 1890 Dallas was the state's most populous city, its fortunes riding on cotton, wheat, banking, and later East Texas oil, and in 1936 it hosted the Texas Centennial Exposition.

Del Rio, TX

When Val Verde County was carved out of the arid borderlands of far West Texas in 1885, the dusty settlement of Del Rio was chosen as its seat of government. Yet formal city government came slowly: residents first voted to incorporate in 1905, electing James McLymont as their first mayor, then apparently dissolved and reincorporated in 1911 under a commission form. A home-rule charter in 1918 and a shift to a council-manager system in 1967 trace the community's steady maturation from frontier waystation to established border city.

Dumas, TX

In 1891 Louis Dumas and J.R. Wheat organized a townsite company on the high, dry plains of the Texas Panhandle and named the new community for Dumas himself. A post office arrived that year, county-seat status the next, and a bank by 1908—yet the arid land drew few settlers and the town stayed small. Everything changed when oil was discovered in 1927, transforming Dumas's fortunes almost overnight.

George West, TX

George West was quite literally willed into being by the rancher whose name it carries. In 1913, George Washington West secured a railroad route through Live Oak County and donated municipal buildings and lots to seed a new town along the line. Within six years it had wrested away the county seat, and it grew into a busy market and shipping point for the region's cattle and cotton.

Hearne, TX

Hearne sits on land first granted in 1830 to Francisco Ruiz, commander of the Mexican outpost Fort Tenoxtitlan on the Brazos frontier. An early tavern, stage stand, and post office served the region before Southern planters like Ebenezer and Horatio Hearne arrived in 1852 to work thousands of acres. When the Houston & Texas Central Railroad reached the site in 1868, Mrs. Christopher Columbus Hearne fulfilled her late husband's pledge by donating 700 acres, and the town platted in 1870 took the family's name.

Hillsboro, TX

Carved from Navarro County in 1853, Hill County took its name from Dr. George Washington Hill, a Republic of Texas Secretary of War. Its seat, Hillsboro, rose on donated land and grew rich on cotton, exploding after the Missouri, Kansas & Texas and other railroads arrived in the early 1880s—a boom preserved today in its Queen Anne homes and the grand 1890 courthouse. The town produced a remarkable roster of Texas leaders, including Lt. Governor Bob Bullock.

Junction, TX

Platted in 1876 as "Denman" in the year Kimble County was organized, this town was soon renamed by its voters to reflect its site at the junction of the North and South Llano rivers. Steady growth brought 300 residents, a courthouse, jail, school, churches, and stores by 1882. Incorporated in 1927, Junction added water and sewer systems, a municipal hall, and even a swimming pool as it matured into the twentieth century.

Killeen, TX

Killeen was born in 1882 as a switching station at the midpoint of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad's line from Temple to Lampasas, taking its name from an Irish-born rail official, Frank P. Killeen. Settlers from older communities like Sugar Loaf and Palo Alto gathered around the depot, and by 1883 the town had a school, gristmills, and a cotton gin. Long an agricultural center, Killeen was transformed in 1942 by the arrival of Camp Hood — now Fort Hood — into one of the fastest-growing towns in Texas.

Krum, TX

Krum grew from an 1876 pioneer settlement known as the Jackson community into a proper town in 1886, when the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway bought land and named the station for railroad official Charles K. Krum. Stores, churches, and a post office quickly followed, but it was the region's rich soil that made Krum famous, drawing renown as one of the largest inland grain markets of the early 1900s. Local wheat even won the grand prize for 'Rainbow Flour' at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

Levelland, TX

Surveyed and platted in 1912 as "Hockley City" by cereal magnate C. W. Post, this barren High Plains townsite won the race for county seat in 1921 — the first meeting of county officers reportedly held inside a Cadillac. Early Levelland made do with a 16-by-32-foot temporary courthouse, a well, and a community black-eyed pea patch, before the railroad arrived in 1925 and oil was discovered nearby in 1937.

Levelland, TX

The City of Levelland Cemetery was established about 1924, in the early years of this Hockley County town on the South Plains of West Texas. It has served the community's families ever since and was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2010.

Manor, TX

This town grew from land first settled by James Manor, who came to Texas with Sam Houston in 1832 and returned with his family to a country still subject to Indian raids into the 1850s. Alongside a roll call of pioneer families, the settlement soon boasted a boys' school, a Methodist church, and the celebrated Parsons Female Academy, whose students included a future lieutenant governor and a dean of the University of Texas law school. When Manor donated right-of-way for the Houston & Texas Central Railroad in 1871, the town platted and named for him the next year was assured its future.

Matagorda County, TX

Planned in the 1820s and founded in 1829 by proprietors including Stephen F. Austin, Matagorda rose near the mouth of the Colorado River to become the third-largest town in Texas by 1834. It served as county seat and an early hub of schools, churches and printing presses in the Republic era. Gulf storms in 1854 and 1875 battered the coastal town, checking the growth of what had been a leading Texas port.

Pasadena, TX

The ground beneath modern Pasadena passed from Native lands to pioneer ranches to a space-age industrial city, but its most dramatic hour came in 1836, when the armies of Sam Houston and Santa Anna crossed here on the way to San Jacinto. Scout Erastus Deaf Smith destroyed a bridge on the Vince ranch to cut off the Mexican army's retreat, and after the battle a fleeing Santa Anna was captured about a mile from this spot. Later known for its strawberry fields and Land of Flowers boosterism, the town founded in 1895 grew into a hub of oil and chemical industry.

Pilot Point, TX

In the late 1840s, pioneers drawn by rich soil, water, and game settled at the edge of Texas's Cross Timbers, near a high stand of timber that guided travelers and gave the town its name. Platted in 1854 and served by an early immigrant trail and the Butterfield stage route, Pilot Point grew into a market hub for farmers and stock raisers, gaining a seminary, newspaper, bank, grist mill, and cotton gin. The arrival of two railroads in the 1880s cemented its place as a regional trade center.

Ralls, TX

Ralls owes its existence to John R. Ralls, a Georgia-born settler who moved West in the 1880s and gave land for a townsite, free lots for its churches, acreage for its school, and even offered 2,000 acres to lure Texas Technological College. After settling litigation with a rival townsite company, he secured a railroad station in 1916, the guarantee of the town's survival. The city was incorporated in 1922, just after its founder's death.

Richmond, TX

Settled in 1822 by members of Stephen F. Austin's colony as 'Fort Settlement,' Richmond was formally laid out in 1837 and named for Richmond, Virginia, becoming county seat in 1838. Among its residents were Jane Long, the 'Mother of Texas,' and scout Erastus 'Deaf' Smith, both buried nearby, and the arrival of Texas's first railroad in 1855 brought new prosperity. Later the town saw saloon-smasher Carry Nation run a hotel and the violent 1889 Jaybird-Woodpecker feud climax in a shootout on Courthouse Square.

Rogers, TX

Founded in 1881 and named for Santa Fe Railroad official John D. Rogers, this Bell County town rode the great Central Texas cotton boom. Within a few years it had a post office and stores, and at its peak boasted schools, churches, a newspaper, three banks, and six cotton gins. Among its native sons were four Bell County sheriffs, including the county's first, William Reed.

Rowlett, TX

Rowlett began as Morris, the name of its 1880 post office, and took its present name in 1889—possibly for early surveyor Daniel Owen Rowlett—three years after the Greenville & Dallas (later MK&T) railroad arrived. By the early 1900s it had doctors, stores, churches, a depot, a bank, and a two-story school, and its citizens voted to incorporate in 1952. The completion of Lake Ray Hubbard in 1971 reshaped the town's borders as Dallas's suburban growth pushed outward.

Sherman, TX

Settled in 1846, Sherman took its name from General Sidney Sherman, who commanded the left wing of the Texas army at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto and later served in the Congress of the Republic of Texas. The town's real boom came with its 1873 incorporation, when rapid growth and prosperity transformed the prairie settlement into a thriving county seat.

Snyder, TX

Snyder began in 1878 as "Hide Town," a rough camp of tents and dugouts where buffalo hunters traded on Deep Creek, taking its lasting name from trader W.H. "Pete" Snyder. The railroad's arrival in 1908 knit it into the wider economy, but it was the 1948 discovery of the vast Canyon Reef oil field that transformed the quiet county seat into an overnight boom town, tripling its population in a single year.

Springtown, TX

In 1856 New Jersey native Captain Joseph Ward settled beside a creek fed by dozens of springs, and by 1859 had platted a town square around Littleton's Springs. Renamed Springtown in the mid-1870s for its bubbling waters, the town filled quickly with churches, general stores, blacksmiths, and cotton gins. Its schools grew so strong that Springtown was known as the 'educational capital of Northwest Texas' from 1884 to 1894, later prospering further from oil.

Taylor, TX

When the International & Great Northern Railroad crossed Williamson County in 1876, it spawned a town called Taylorsville, named for railroad executive Moses Taylor, with lots sold that June and a post office opened in August. Sitting on a cattle trail, the town quickly became a major shipping point for cattle, then grew further after a second rail line arrived in 1882 and the community incorporated. Renamed simply Taylor in 1892, it added cotton to cattle and rails as pillars of a prosperous local economy.

Tom Bean, TX

Wealthy Bonham landowner and surveyor Thomas Bean donated fifty acres for a branch railroad from Sherman to Commerce, and the town of Tom Bean sprang up in 1887, the year he died. Nearby Whitemound, bypassed by the rails, lost its post office and its settlers to the new town. By the early 1900s Tom Bean boomed with a grain company, drugstore, newspaper, saloon, dance hall, and movie theater—until cars and the decline of cotton drew business away to Denison and Sherman.

Weir, TX

Weir grew from the farms and mills of settlers like Thomas Calvin Weir and the Towns brothers, who arrived in Williamson County in the decades after the Civil War. The town's fate turned on the railroad: when the line came through Weir in 1893 and bypassed nearby Townsville, residents and businesses gradually consolidated into the new community, which incorporated in 1903. A lakeside resort, a 1913 flood, drought, and two world wars each left their mark before Weir became a chartered city in 1987.

Wharton, TX

Wharton was founded in April 1846 as the seat of its county, on land drawn from the grant of William Kincheloe, one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists who settled the area in 1822. Surveyors laid out the townsite around Monterey Square, and the rich bottomland farms drew settlers steadily. Railroads and irrigation later spurred its growth into a regional center of farming, education, and services.

Albany, TX

During the Great Depression the Civilian Conservation Corps put millions of young men to work, and in 1939 a camp opened at Fort Griffin State Park after Shackelford County citizens donated the historic frontier fort to the state. Some two hundred enrollees — soon including local men — built a stone pavilion, park roads, picnic sites, a drainage system, and an entrance gate while attending classes and joining community life. The camp closed in December 1941, and many of its young workers went straight into military service in World War II.

Bastrop, TX

After Moses Gage bought land along Alum Creek in 1837, a small settlement known as Craft's Prairie grew up around his family in Bastrop County. When his son Sherly Gage died in 1850 he was buried on a rise above Little Alum Creek, and the Black, Rector, and Gage families—along with roughly thirty enslaved people in the site's southeast corner—filled the graveyard through the 1860s. Martha Jane Claiborne formally established the cemetery before her death in 1936, and a family association has cared for it since 1947.

Kyle, TX

Col. John Claiborne Kyle and his wife Lucy came to the Republic of Texas from Mississippi in 1844 and built this hand-hewn cedar log home after buying land here in 1850. Its four-pen dog-trot form stood along the busy Austin–San Antonio stage route, making it a fixture of early travel and politics. Five of Kyle's sons served in the Confederate Army, and the nearby town of Kyle takes its name from one of them, Capt. Ferg Kyle.

Abilene, TX

Born in East Texas and hardened by service in the Confederate army, Claiborne "Clabe" Merchant turned to the open range, founding his first ranch in 1874 as cattle became the engine of the West Texas economy. When the railroad reached the plains in 1881, he helped establish a new town and gave it the name Abilene, after the famous Kansas cattle hub. He spent decades pouring his time and fortune into the community he helped raise from open country.

Seguin, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1803, Claiborne West threw himself into the founding of a new republic: he served as a delegate to the conventions of 1832 and 1835, sat on the provisional government's council, and on March 2, 1836, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. He fought as a soldier and served in the Congress of the Republic of Texas before his death in 1866. Texas erected this Star-and-Wreath grave marker in his honor in 1962.

Vidor, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1800, Claiborne West brought his family to the Cow Bayou settlement in 1825 and soon threw himself into the struggle for independence from Mexico, attending the 1832 Convention and 1835 Consultation at San Felipe de Austin. On March 2, 1836, at Washington-on-the-Brazos, he was one of 58 signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and helped draft the Republic's constitution. He served in the volunteers, sat in the first Congress of the Republic, and gave shape to what became Orange County before settling his final years in Seguin.

Clairette, TX

Joseph and Elizabeth Salmon came to the Republic of Texas in 1839 and settled this area in 1854. When their teenage son Albert died in 1858, he was buried at his favorite campsite in a grove of oaks on the family land, and in 1876 his brother deeded the surrounding acre as a community cemetery. Later additions enlarged the grounds, whose varied gravestones reflect the region's pioneer roots.

Town of Clarence, NY

In 1829, David Vantine opened a store at this crossroads in the Town of Clarence, and the cluster of homes and businesses that grew up around it took the name Vantine's Corners. Like countless hamlets across western New York, the little settlement was anchored by a single merchant whose shop served as gathering place, post stop, and informal town center. As the community matured it took on the name Clarence Center, marking the steady transformation of frontier farmland into settled village life in the decades after the Erie Canal opened the region.

Town of Clarence, NY

In 1842, Robert Brown raised a grist mill at this spot in the young farming town of Clarence Center, harnessing local water power to grind the wheat and corn of western New York's settlers into flour and meal. Over the next four decades the mill passed through a succession of millers — Eli Herr, Abraham Gantz, Daniel Blocher, Alexander Burns, and Oscar King — anchoring the community's economy until fire swept it away in 1888.

Clarendon, TX

On this bold promontory lies the first cemetery of Donley County, resting place of the earliest settlers of Old Clarendon in the Texas Panhandle. Founded as a colony in the late 1870s, Clarendon was among the first Anglo settlements on the high plains, where pioneers faced hardship, isolation, and loss. In 1938 the State of Texas dedicated this granite monument to those first dead and the survivors who built on after them.

Clarion, PA

When Pennsylvania carved Clarion County from Armstrong and Venango in 1839, it named the new territory for the river whose clear, bell-like current early travelers likened to a distant clarion horn. The hills here proved rich in the raw materials of the young industrial age: charcoal-fired iron furnaces sprang up across the county, while abundant coal seams and vast timber stands fed a lumbering trade that floated logs downstream to market. The seat town of Clarion took shape quickly, incorporating as a borough by 1841 as the county organized itself around courthouse and commerce.

Port Lavaca, TX

This burial ground served the Clark family of the vanished Chocolate community, named for nearby Chocolate Creek where Sylvanus Hatch and his brother Joseph settled in 1846. Residents raised cattle and horses, farmed, and worshipped at St. Paul's-on-the-Prairie, whose building also housed the school. In the mid-1850s John Clark arrived and built stock pens known as Clark's Station along the Indianola Railroad, letting area farmers ship crops and cattle to market; he deeded this cemetery in 1899.

Weatherford, TX

This burial ground began with the pioneer families who camped along the Clear Fork of the Trinity River in the 1830s, and its oldest marked grave belongs to Anzaline Godfrey, wife of a Methodist circuit-founder, who died in 1859. Ground-penetrating radar has since revealed some sixty-five unmarked pioneer-era graves alongside the named ones. Formally established in 1880 on the site of Godfrey's Chapel, the cemetery holds early Methodist founders, county organizers, a chief justice, and veterans reaching from the Texas Rangers through Korea and Vietnam.

Lockhart, TX

North Carolina native James E. Clark came to Texas and married in Bastrop County before buying land in this area in 1881, where he and his wife Mary raised nine children. In 1884 he set aside ground for both a school and a family cemetery, and when he died in 1898 his was the first marked grave. The adjoining community center now stands on the site of the old school, tying the two institutions together.

Winchester, KY

Clark County, created in 1792 and named for Revolutionary War hero General George Rogers Clark, has seen a succession of courthouses on this Winchester site—from a two-room log cabin in 1794 to a brick building in 1797 and a third courthouse in 1821, where Henry Clay argued his last jury case in 1849. The present limestone courthouse, designed by noted Lexington architect John McMurtry and completed in 1855, was later heightened and expanded, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Rio Frio, TX

In 1887 newlyweds Joseph and Annie Clark bought this Hill Country land from Annie's father, beginning a family story marked by a haunting coincidence. Joseph died in a 1901 wagon accident on a nearby curve; Annie later married his brother David, who was killed on the very same curve decades later. Annie was buried between her two husbands in the family plot that still holds their kin.

Bandera vicinity, TX

Amasa Clark, a veteran of the Mexican War, became the first permanent settler of Bandera and worked an orchard and nursery on this homestead for decades—living to the remarkable age of 101. This family cemetery, opened with the 1883 burial of his first wife, holds several generations of Clarks, including Amasa, two wives, and many of his nineteen children.

Butler, WI

Butler, Wisconsin grew from a handful of families who settled the area in its earliest days, and the Clark family was among those first residents. This modest marker fixes the spot of their home, anchoring the village's origin story to a specific place. It is the kind of hyper-local memory that keeps a small community's founding generation from being forgotten.

Van Horn, TX

The Clark Hotel was the first permanent structure in Van Horn, its earliest 1901 portion housing the original city post office and its main block built in 1905–06 from concrete blocks handmade on site. When Culberson County was newly organized in 1911–12, the building served as the county courthouse, and over the years it hosted theatrical programs, school graduations, a saloon, offices, and shops before Fred Clark converted it into a hotel in 1918. Few buildings did more jobs in a young West Texas town.

Bonham, TX

This congregation took shape in 1893 at a meeting in the home of Mrs. S. J. Stevenson, gathering there for worship until members built a small church on this site in 1901 — a building that still serves as the sanctuary today. In the 1920s the church was renamed Clark Memorial in honor of longtime member Mrs. John Clark. Over the years it has sent a number of its own members into the ministry.

Anderson Township, OH

When James Clark raised these stone walls around 1801, Ohio was raw frontier — barely settled country on the far edge of the young republic, where a durable stone dwelling was a rare mark of permanence among log cabins. Clark himself carried an older story in his bones: as a boy soldier he had beaten a drummer's cadence at Yorktown in 1781, the siege that effectively ended the Revolutionary War. Two decades later he was among the pioneers pushing west across the Appalachians into the Northwest Territory, trading a battlefield for a homestead in the Ohio wilderness.

Hemphill, TX

Before Texas was even a decade into its own republic, William and Mahala Clark carved a homestead out of the Big Sandy Creek country of the East Texas piney woods. Their family plot became the resting place of pioneers whose names time has mostly erased—earlier travelers are thought to lie here in unmarked graves. Alongside the neighboring Smith burying ground, these quiet cemeteries are the last tangible trace of a frontier farming community that has otherwise vanished.

Lockhart, TX

When William and Nancy Clark brought their family from Alabama to Caldwell County in 1850, worship in this corner of central Texas still happened in parlors and open fields. That changed in 1877, when twenty-six neighbors gathered in the Clark home to organize a Methodist congregation, and a land gift from Joseph and Jennie Magee soon gave them both a church and a burying ground. The little two-year-old laid to rest here in 1882 became the first of generations linked by this soil, and long after the church itself came down in 1950, Clark and Magee descendants kept the cemetery alive through reunions and shared care.

Clarksville, TX

James Clark, founder of Clarksville, began this burial ground in the 1830s, and it holds his father Benjamin, a Revolutionary War veteran whose grave is the earliest here. Among the others laid to rest are Albert Hamilton Latimer, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, the pioneering newspaperman Col. Charles DeMorse, and the early preacher-educator Rev. John Anderson. Long known as the Baptist Cemetery, it gathers the founding generation of one of northeast Texas's oldest towns.

Sierra Blanca, TX

Claude Hudspeth went to work as a ranch hand at nine and was editing an Ozona newspaper by sixteen, largely self-educating himself before winning a seat in the Texas Legislature in 1902. Over a 29-year public career he served in the state Senate, was admitted to the bar in 1909, and represented Texas in the U.S. House from 1919 to 1931, championing legislation for working people. Along the way he backed sending federal troops to protect El Paso residents endangered by fighting during the Mexican Revolution — and the far West Texas county was named in his honor.

Claude, TX

In 1887 the Fort Worth & Denver City Railway pushed across the Texas Panhandle, and the man at the throttle of the first passenger train to reach this spot was engineer Claude Monroe Ayers. The new townsite that grew up along the tracks took his first name, as railroad settlements across the West so often borrowed the names of the men who built and ran them. Ayers lived until 1915, his brief moment on the frontier line permanently stamped on the map.