Westward Expansion

Bandera, TX

Though Bandera County was organized in 1856, its officials made do with makeshift quarters until this courthouse was built in 1890-91. Designed in a local version of the Second Renaissance Revival style by B.F. Trester of San Antonio, for the princely fee of five dollars, it was constructed of white limestone quarried nearby by contractors Ed Braden & Sons. Remodeled with an added wing in 1966, it remains the county's first permanent seat of government.

Bandera, TX

The name Bandera traces to eighteenth-century clashes between the Spanish army and Lipan Apaches at the nearby pass, but the town itself began in the 1840s when Charles de Montel, John James, and John Hunter Herndon surveyed and purchased land along the Medina River. A Mormon colony arrived in 1854, followed by Polish immigrants whose hand-cut limestone buildings still stand, and settlers of many nations soon joined them. In 1856 the Texas Legislature made Bandera the seat of its new county.

Bandera, TX

This Hill Country Methodist congregation traces its roots to 1861, when Rev. John Devilbiss—who had helped found San Antonio's first Protestant church—held services in Bandera, and to its formal organization in 1867 under Rev. A.J. Potter. Members built the Gothic-style church in 1880 from hand-cut limestone and oak timbers, and though enlarged and remodeled it keeps its original character. A Sunday school begun in 1869 rounded out its early ministry.

Bandera, TX

For thousands of years this narrow gap in the hills between the Guadalupe and Medina valleys funneled travelers through the Texas Hill Country. Comanche and Apache trails converged here, a Swiss botanist recorded native burial customs at the pass in 1828, and by the 1840s it saw patrols and clashes between Texas Rangers and Native peoples. Later it carried U.S. Army surveyors mapping routes to California, then cattle drives up the Western Trail, and finally a state highway.

Bandera vicinity, TX

This gap through the mountains has been a celebrated crossing since the earliest days of Spanish settlement, linking the Medina and Guadalupe river country. Generations of frontier fighting and raiding passed through it, and it served as an old Texas Ranger trail as well as a U.S. Army route between frontier posts. Its narrow passage made it a natural chokepoint in the contested Hill Country.

Bandera, TX

The Texas cowboy's craft descended from the Mexican vaqueros, and nowhere did the tradition run deeper than in Bandera County, where boys learned to ride and drive cattle young. From 1874 to 1894 the town served as a staging ground for enormous herds bound up the Western Cattle Trail toward Kansas and beyond. Local rodeos began in the 1920s and produced world champions like Toots Mansfield, and by 1948 the press had crowned Bandera the 'Cowboy Capital of the World.'

Bangs, TX

Bangs Cemetery was established in 1905, as the railroad town of Bangs in Brown County was taking shape amid the farms and ranches of Central Texas. Community cemeteries founded in this era served as enduring anchors for the families who settled the land, recording the names of a growing rural population. Its designation as a Historic Texas Cemetery recognizes it as a repository of that local history.

Menard, TX

Built of native stone in 1903, the Bank of Menard answered a real frontier problem: settlers had been keeping their cash in merchants' safes or riding sixty robber-plagued miles to do their banking. A local bank of solid rock signaled that this remote West Texas town had arrived. It stands as a monument to the moment financial institutions caught up with the settlement of the frontier.

Banquete, TX

In 1832 the McMullen–McGloin colony of Irish families on the Nueces River was linked to Mexico by the new Matamoros Road, and Mexican officials threw a four-day fiesta of welcome — a "banquete" — that gave the village its name. Settled before the Civil War as a stock-raising and horse-trading center, Banquete became a key stop on the wartime trade route to Mexico. Its cemetery holds Confederate soldiers, pioneer ranching families, and, by tradition, ground once used by the notorious horse trader Sally Scull.

San Antonio, TX

Cowboys called it "Devil's Rope," and Texas cattlemen wanted nothing to do with barbed wire until a showman named John Ware Gates staged a dramatic proof on San Antonio's Military Plaza in the late 1870s. He penned frenzied longhorns behind a barbed-wire corral, prodded them with torches, and watched the flimsy-looking fence hold as skeptics lost their bets. Orders soon outran supply, and Gates went on to build wire and steel plants and to invest in the Spindletop oil boom.

San Antonio, TX

In 1876, salesmen Pete McManus and young John Warne Gates staged a theatrical demonstration in San Antonio's Alamo Plaza, penning thundering longhorns inside a corral of Joseph Glidden's newly patented barbed wire. Skeptical cattlemen watched the flimsy-looking fence hold, then rushed into the Menger Hotel to place orders. Gates, later nicknamed "Bet-A-Million," rode the sale into a fortune and helped found the company that became Texaco.

Gainesville, TX

This site marks an early chapter in one of the West's most transformative technologies. After Joseph Glidden of Illinois patented his barbed wire in 1874, his salesman Henry B. Sanborn brought it to North Texas, and Gainesville's Cleaves & Fletcher Hardware began stocking it for eager ranchers. Sanborn's 1875 sale here may have been the earliest transaction of modern two-strand barbed wire in Texas.

Barclay, TX

Barclay took shape in 1877 when William Anderson Barclay opened a general store and, soon after, became the town's first postmaster while ranching and building businesses across central Texas. As settlers arrived, pioneer Lyddleton Smith gave land in 1881 for a Baptist church, whose members set aside part of the property as a burial ground with its oldest grave dating to 1882. Confederate veteran Paul Pieper later donated additional acreage, and the cemetery has been tended by a local association since 1915.

Bardstown, KY

Explored in the mid-1770s and settled in 1780, this Nelson County town was laid off by William Bard, acting as agent for his brother David and John C. Owings, and was first called Salem. A 1785 Virginia land grant of 1,000 acres set aside 100, including Salem, for a county seat, and Bard granted two acres for public buildings. The first courthouse of hewn logs went up in 1785, by which time the town was known as "Baird's Town" — a name formalized as Bardstown when it was incorporated in 1788.

Round Rock, TX

E. B. and Mary Harvey Barker bought this house of locally quarried limestone in 1873. Though the family farmed at Rice's Crossing some twenty miles east, they wintered here so their eight children could attend school in Round Rock. Their son Dudley grew up to become a noted Texas Ranger, returning in 1940 to etch his birth date into an interior wall. The dwelling survives as an intact example of a vernacular center-passage house.

Beeville, TX

Barnard Elliott Bee, Sr. was a South Carolina lawyer and colonel who cast his lot with the young Republic of Texas after moving west in 1836. He rose quickly through its government, serving as the Republic's first Secretary of the Treasury, then Secretary of War, and finally as its diplomat to Mexico and the United States—where he helped secure formal U.S. recognition of Texas in 1843. Both Bee County and Beeville carry his name, given at his son's urging.

Glen Rose, TX

Charles Barnard built this grist mill in 1860 like a fort — walls three feet thick at the base, pierced with gun ports — to withstand Indian attacks on the Texas frontier. Charles and his brother George, who had earlier run successful trading houses at Waco and elsewhere, operated the mill until 1874. Over the decades it gained a cotton gin, hosted social gatherings on its third floor, and even served as a hospital from 1943 to 1971.

Glen Rose, TX

In 1843 the Torrey brothers and their friend George Barnard—with Sam Houston as a silent partner—won a contract to build trading posts along the Brazos frontier. Barnard's fair dealing earned Native trust, and after ransoming a young captive, Juana Cavasos, from the Comanches, the family settled her with his brother Charles at a post near Comanche Peak. When the government removed the region's Native peoples to Oklahoma in 1859, the trade faded, and Charles built a gristmill whose town became Glen Rose.

San Saba, TX

Between 1855 and 1895, John W. Barnett and his family — joined by sons-in-law Burrell and Tom Hamrick — settled a large tract here and founded the community of Simpson Creek. They were among the first in the area to both farm and irrigate their crops, and they helped organize the county, host its first camp meeting, and open one of its earliest schools.

Barnhart, TX

Founded in 1910 and named for a Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railroad agent, Barnhart boomed in the 1920s and 1930s as a major freighting center and what many called the largest inland livestock shipping point in the region. The Ozona-Barnhart Trap Co. built cattle-holding pens along the trails into town. At its peak Barnhart supported a school, newspaper, hotels, cafes, and a bank — but the town faded as rail traffic declined.

Barnhart, TX

In 1914 residents of several faiths met outdoors to organize a shared Union church for the ranching community of Barnhart. Cowboys from the surrounding spreads built the sanctuary themselves under the direction of W. H. Parker and his brother-in-law, finishing it in 1917. Fittingly nicknamed the Cowboy Church, it has hosted worshippers of many denominations together ever since.

Bastrop, TX

This monument honors Felipe Enrique Neri, the Baron de Bastrop (1770–1829), a colonizer whose intervention proved decisive for Anglo-American Texas. As a land commissioner and Red River empresario, he helped Moses Austin win the first Spanish contract to colonize Texas in 1821 and later served in the Congress of Coahuila and Texas. In 1837 the town and county — once called Mina — were renamed Bastrop in his memory.

Glasgow, KY

Formed in 1798 from Green and Warren counties, Barren County took its name from the open 'barrens,' or prairies, that drew early explorers and settlers. During the Civil War the area saw hard use: the first two of Morgan's Raids passed through in 1862, the same year General Braxton Bragg's Confederate army entered Kentucky here.

Edgewood, TX

A post office opened at the crossroads of Barren Ridge in 1850 with James Bundy as its first postmaster. Because a Canton post office already existed in neighboring Smith County, residents of the Van Zandt County seat — also called Canton — had to ride eight miles here for their mail, and the spot doubled as a stop on the Dallas–Shreveport stage road. When the post office closed in 1857 the settlement quickly faded, leaving only the Blair/Bundy Cemetery behind.

Chappell Hill, TX

In 1844 Anson Jones, the last president of the Republic of Texas, bought this land and named it "Barrington" for his Massachusetts birthplace, making it in effect the "White House of Texas" during his 1844–46 presidency. After leading Texas into annexation with the United States, Jones retired here as a gentleman farmer; the surviving house was later moved to Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park.

Realitos, TX

The Barronena Ranch preserves the deep roots of South Texas ranching, on land granted by the Republic of Mexico to Diego Hinojosa and patented under Texas in 1856. Later owners included James O. Luby, an English-born Confederate veteran who became Duval County's first judge, before J. M. Bennett bought the ranch in 1905 and kept it in his family. Its adobe core reportedly served as a stage stop between Goliad and Laredo, and after World War II the King Ranch introduced its famous Santa Gertrudis cattle here.

Barry, TX

Barry grew up where the rails met the cotton fields. Named for Corsicana businessman Bryan T. Barry, the town got its post office in 1886, the same year the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas Railroad arrived, and clustered around Owen Taylor's general store. Settlers drawn by rich farmland cleared the land for cotton—Barry's first gin opened in 1899—and by 1920 the community supported banks, churches, and a school that served the area until 1958.

Barry, TX

Founded in September 1891 with seven charter members as the Elam Baptist Church, this congregation called its first pastor the next summer and quickly joined the Navarro County Baptist Association. A Sunday School began by 1895, and in 1916–17 the members built their second church building at this site, where worship has continued ever since. For more than a century the church has anchored the little farming community of Barry.

Fort Davis, TX

This 6,300-foot peak overlooking Fort Davis served from the 1850s to the 1880s as a campground and lookout for soldiers, mail coaches, freighters, and emigrants crossing the Trans-Pecos, and it saw the area's last Indian raid in 1881. In 1964 Governor John Connally named it for Barry Scobee, a writer and historian whose efforts helped preserve old Fort Davis.

Buda, TX

This ground was once part of a Mexican land grant awarded to empresario Ben Milam in 1826. James U. Barton brought his family from Alabama in the 1850s and established a farm here, and the cemetery's first burial is believed to be his infant granddaughter, who died in 1873. Barton formally deeded 3.25 acres for the graveyard in 1881, and it still serves the Mountain City community today.

Austin, TX

Fed by the Balcones Fault and gushing millions of gallons daily, Barton Springs drew people long before Austin existed — Native peoples, then Spanish friars who placed three missions here in 1730–31, then settler William "Uncle Billy" Barton, who patented the land around 1837 and named springs for his daughters. His tame buffalo calves lured sightseers even amid the danger of frontier raids, and over the decades bathhouses, mills, a merry-go-round, and excursion boats turned the spot into a playground. A.J. Zilker eventually deeded the land to Austin as the beloved public park it remains.

Dallas, TX

Kentucky-born Barton Warren Stone reached Dallas from Tennessee in 1851 and prospered at farming and law. He helped lead the 1852 settlers' rebellion against Peters Colony land agent H. O. Hedgecoxe, and though he first opposed secession, he raised and commanded two Confederate cavalry regiments during the Civil War. After a spell in Missouri he returned to Dallas in 1879 to practice law once more.

Bartonville, TX

Bartonville grew from post-Texas Revolution settlement along Denton Creek, where fertile sandy soil drew subsistence farmers raising peanuts, cotton, and grain. In 1881 brothers Bentley and James Barton bought ten acres at a busy crossroads; Bentley's store and gristmill prospered, and the settlement soon shed the name "Barton's Mill" for Bartonville. The store remained the town's hub through incorporation, disincorporation, and reincorporation over 130 years, closing only in 2013.

Tyler, TX

The community of Bascom was settled in the mid-1840s and named by early settler Lazariah Smith for a Tennessee Methodist bishop. Burials began just north of this spot, and in 1857 acreage on both sides of the Tyler-to-Henderson road was set aside as a cemetery, with graves from the earlier site reinterred here. Among its more than 2,000 burials lie the region's first settlers, their descendants, and at least one veteran of the War of 1812.

Kosse, TX

Henry Caleb Bassett, a Connecticut-born tradesman turned banker, moved to Texas in 1869 and by 1871 was buying land near the Little Brazos River northwest of Kosse. Ahead of his first child's birth in 1875, he and his wife Hattie built a two-story brick house — a rarity among Texas farmhouses of the era — likely from local Kosse brick. The surrounding Bassett Farms grew to nearly 2,500 acres of livestock, corn, cotton, and peaches and stayed in the family for over a century.

Bastrop, TX

Founded before 1857, this congregation first gathered in the county courthouse, then in a rock church raised on this site in 1867. The New England Victorian building standing today was erected in 1895 and still rings the old rock church's bell — a bell that once called passengers aboard a Colorado River steamboat. Its history threads together frontier worship and the river commerce that once moved through Bastrop.

Bastrop, TX

This land was part of Stephen F. Austin's original 1821 colonial grant, becoming the municipality of Mina in 1834 and then a county of the Republic of Texas in 1836. In December 1837 it was renamed Bastrop to honor Felipe Enrique Neri, the Baron de Bastrop, land commissioner for Austin's Colony and a member of the Coahuila-and-Texas congress. The town of Bastrop serves as the county seat.

Bastrop, TX

Bastrop, one of Texas's oldest towns, anchored a county seat whose courthouse dates to 1883, in the confident Gilded Age decades when Texas counties raised substantial public buildings to signal permanence and civic pride. A courthouse of this era stood at the center of local government, commerce, and community life.

Bastrop, TX

Built in 1891–92 to a design by prominent Houston architect Eugene T. Heiner, the Bastrop County Jail combined civic function with real architectural ambition: tan brick walls trimmed in red, a pressed-metal cornice, and a mansard roof. A clever exterior disguised the fact that jailer's quarters occupied the first floor while cell blocks filled the second and third. It served the county until 1974.

Bastrop, TX

This Methodist congregation traces its roots to 1835, when lay preacher James Gilleland gathered worshipers at a time when Mexican law still forbade Protestant services—an act of quiet defiance on the eve of the Texas Revolution. The church built its first sanctuary in 1851 and its present structure in 1924, carrying the older building's altar rail, pews, and memorial windows forward so the old and new stand blended together.

Huntsville, TX

Established in the 1870s near Union Hill Church, Bath Cemetery has served the East Texas community of Bath—locally nicknamed Possum Walk—since its earliest recorded burial, that of William Arnold in 1877. Shaded by trees planted over a century ago, its markers read like a village roster: teachers, veterans, ministers, and postmasters who built and sustained the settlement, tended today by descendants of those first families.

Batson, TX

Batson Prairie takes its name from a pioneer family who settled here by the 1840s, but much of the community grew from the generosity of the Guedry family, who donated land for a school, a church, and a cemetery. A one-room schoolhouse opened in 1896, the Batson Prairie Baptist Church organized in 1897, and Guedry Cemetery—now holding more than 2,000 burials—recorded its first grave in 1900. Together these institutions formed the heart of community life for generations.

Weatherford, TX

Henry Hill Battern left Virginia for Parker County around 1860, buying 160 acres that included this one-acre burial ground. His second wife, Sarah Jane, died that same year and is said to be the first laid to rest here. A Civil War veteran who served as the community's unofficial doctor and as a local justice of the peace, Battern was widely respected despite having no formal medical training; the last known burial, his son Francis, came in 1934.

Lampasas, TX

This branch of Sulphur Creek took its name from a bloody chapter of the Horrell-Higgins Feud, one of the deadliest range vendettas of frontier Texas. On the morning of March 26, 1877, gunmen ambushed Tom and Mart Horrell as they rode to district court in Lampasas; the brothers returned fire and escaped, and Texas Rangers summoned to the scene never caught the attackers, widely believed to be Higgins partisans. The feud dragged on with more gunfire for months afterward.

Mart, TX

The Battle community grew up around 1880 on land tied to Nicholas W. Battle, and by the 1890s it had a school, post office, businesses, homes, and churches. A cemetery was laid out on ground acquired from the McLennan family, its earliest documented grave dating to 1888. After the International and Great Northern Railroad bypassed the town around 1901, Battle went into decline, leaving the cemetery as a memorial to the pioneers who settled here.

Dawson, TX

In October 1838 a party of twenty-five Texan surveyors pressing into Kickapoo hunting grounds ignored warnings to withdraw and was ambushed, with only seven men escaping and four of those wounded. Survivors later returned to bury their fallen comrades together in a common grave on this ground. The episode became known as the Battle Creek fight, one of the bloodiest surveyor clashes of the Republic era.

Matagorda County, TX

In 1826, in the early years of Anglo colonization of Texas, a company of settler volunteers led by Captain Aylett C. Buckner attacked a band of Karankawa people here, following the killing of several families on Lower Caney Creek. The clash was one of many violent encounters between arriving colonists and the coastal Karankawa during the colonial settlement of the Texas coast.

Lander County, NV

Battle Mountain took its name from a nearby range where California emigrants were said to have been ambushed in the 1850s, but the town itself sprang up in January 1870 after the railroad shifted its station here from Argenta and renamed the Reese River siding. Stage and freight roads teemed with mud wagons and heavy freighters bound for the mining camps to the south, and from 1880 to 1938 the town served as headquarters for the Central Nevada Railway. A copper boom arrived in 1897, and the growing town finally won the county seat from Austin in 1979.

Stinnett, TX

On November 25, 1864, Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson led a column of U.S. troops against a large force of Kiowa and Comanche near the ruins of an old trading post known as Adobe Walls. Sheltering behind the crumbling walls, Carson's men fought a hard engagement before withdrawing from the far more numerous warriors. It proved to be the famed frontiersman's last battle.

Agua Dulce, TX

In the winter of 1835–36, as Texas fought for independence from Mexico, a freelance expedition led by Dr. James Grant and Frances W. Johnson set out to seize Matamoros — a scheme Sam Houston distrusted and that bled away recruits before it reached the Nueces. General José de Urrea's cavalry ran the scattered volunteers down, overwhelming Johnson's camp at San Patricio and then surprising Grant's horse-hunting party at Agua Dulce Creek. The clash fell on March 2, 1836 — the very day delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos signed the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Taylor, TX

In the winter of 1839, the young Republic of Texas was still contesting its frontier with the Comanche, whose horseback raiders ranged across the Blackland Prairie. After a retaliatory raid on area homesteads killed settlers and carried off captives, a hastily gathered militia pursued the raiders to Brushy Creek, where the fighting cost the lives of Jacob Burleson and several companions. It proved the last major clash between settlers and Native people in Williamson County.

San Bernardino County, CA · est. 1986

By the 1860s, settlers pressing into the rich lands of the San Bernardino Mountains collided with the Native people whose gathering grounds these highlands had long been. That struggle came to a head at Chimney Rock in February 1867, where the outnumbered defenders fought hard before being driven into the desert, losing access to their traditional food-gathering areas in the years that followed.

Jones Creek, TX

In 1824, Stephen F. Austin dispatched Captain Randal Jones with a company of 23 men to the lower Brazos amid conflict with the Karankawa people. Jones's scouts located the Karankawa camp near this site, and at dawn the Texans attacked, only to find the Karankawa ready with spears. The clash left about fifteen Karankawa dead and scattered the rest.

Progreso, TX

In 1859 and 1860 Juan N. Cortina led a series of raids on Texas settlements along the lower Rio Grande, sparking the clashes known as the Cortina Wars. On February 4, 1860, Cortina's raiders met Capt. John S. "Rip" Ford's Texas Rangers at La Bolsa Bend, where the Rangers beat back an attack on the riverboat Ranchero as it steamed down from Rio Grande City. Cortina slipped across into Mexico, where he later rose to become a general in the Mexican Army.

Leming, TX

In August 1813, amid the upheaval of Spain's collapsing empire, the Republican Army of the North—American volunteers, Tejanos, Mexicans, and Native Americans who had seized San Antonio in the name of an independent Texas—marched south and was ambushed near the Medina River. Spanish General Joaquín de Arredondo crushed them in the bloodiest battle ever fought on Texas soil; fewer than 100 of some 1,400 escaped, and most captives were executed. Among Arredondo's officers was a young Antonio López de Santa Anna, who would return decades later.

Lefors, TX

On September 29, 1872, Colonel Ranald MacKenzie's cavalry and infantry surprised a 262-tepee Comanche village here on the North Fork of the Red River, whose people had refused to be confined to reservations. The troops seized the village in about half an hour, though Chief Mow-Way's warriors fought fiercely from the creek banks — and that night the Comanches slipped back and recaptured their horse herd. The lesson MacKenzie drew shaped his decisive 1874 campaign against the Southern Plains tribes.

Lockhart, TX

By 1840 the young Republic of Texas and the Comanche and Kiowa nations were locked in escalating violence, inflamed by President Lamar's aggressive policies and the deadly Council House Fight in San Antonio. In revenge, a large war party swept to the coast and sacked Linnville before turning inland laden with plunder. On August 12, 1840, Texan volunteers under Felix Huston, Edward Burleson, and Mathew Caldwell—joined by Tonkawa allies—intercepted them at Plum Creek in a running fight across the prairie.

Houston, TX

On the afternoon of April 21, 1836, Sam Houston's roughly one thousand Texans stormed Santa Anna's larger Mexican army in a charge that lasted only eighteen minutes yet decided a continent's future. Crying "Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember Goliad!" as their band played a love song, the Texans routed the enemy, capturing Santa Anna himself the next day. The stunning victory secured Texas independence and, with annexation nine years later, set in motion the U.S. acquisition of vast western lands.

San Patricio, TX

In the predawn hours of February 27, 1836, during the Texas Revolution, Mexican General José Urrea's troops surprised a Texan force in the streets of Old San Patricio. The Texans, remnants of an ill-fated expedition against Matamoros led by Francis W. Johnson and Dr. James Grant, were scattered — sixteen killed and thirty taken prisoner — while a few, including Johnson, escaped. Days later Urrea crushed Grant's remaining men at Agua Dulce Creek, sending the survivors into months of captivity in Matamoros.

Spokane County, WA

This monument marks the Battle of Spokane Plains, fought on September 5, 1858, when U.S. troops under Colonel George Wright defeated allied Coeur d'Alene, Palouse, and Spokane warriors. The clash was part of the wider conflict that opened the interior Pacific Northwest to settlement following disputes over land and passage. Wright's campaign, remembered for its harsh aftermath, effectively ended organized Native resistance in the region.