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Kosse, Texas

Everything Kosse is known for

4 songs mention this city

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Music in Kosse

Songs About Kosse

Texas Boy (Kosse, TX)
Comfort Space
80%
"Texas Boy (Kosse, TX)"
Lone Star Beer and Bob Wills Music
Red Steagall
4%
"Lone star beer and Bob Wills music"
Texans and Okies
Hank Thompson
3%
"And Bob Wills a-playing those great western songs"
Oh No! Not Another One
Doug Sahm
2%
"He said Bob Wills' fiddles was a joke"

Artists From Kosse

No artists from Kosse in the database yet.

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Kosse

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Kosse.

Brazos River 43 songs Interstate 35 45 songs Interstate 45 8 songs Kickapoo Creek 4 songs

Musical Heritage

Hound Dog Was Hers First RoadyGoat

Thornton is named for an early settler, not for Big Mama Thornton. But we can't pass up the chance. Willie Mae Thornton, known as Big Mama, was a blues singer. Two young songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, wrote a song called Hound Dog, and she recorded it first, in the early nineteen fifties. According to the Handbook of Texas, she received a lifetime total of five hundred dollars for that song. About three years later, Elvis Presley recorded Hound Dog, and it became a rock and roll classic. Something similar happened again. Big Mama wrote and recorded a song called Ball and Chain. Later, Janis Joplin recorded it, and it became a huge hit. In two thousand twenty four, Big Mama Thornton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

RoadyGoat → · 7.8 mi away

History of Kosse

Sixteen, Passing Through RoadyGoat

In January eighteen seventy, a sixteen-year-old named John Wesley Hardin rode through Kosse on his way to Brenham, and by his own account, he left a dead man behind. Hardin would become one of the most notorious gunmen in Texas, and this story comes only from the autobiography he wrote years later. He said he met a pretty girl in Kosse, and they got along famously. He made a date to call on her that night. While he was there, a man made a row at the door and came in. The girl said it was her sweetheart. The man told Hardin he would kill him unless he handed over a hundred dollars. Hardin said he only had about fifty or sixty on him, but there was more in his saddlebags at the stable. The man said, give me what you have got first. Hardin dropped some of the money on the floor. As the man stooped to pick it up, Hardin fired. He wrote that the ball struck him between the eyes, and called him a dead robber. Then he gathered up most of his money and rode on. No independent record of that killing has ever turned up. Hardin's word is all we have.

RoadyGoat →

In Her Own Words: Silvia King RoadyGoat

In a cemetery a few miles southwest of Kosse lies a woman named Silvia King, and in nineteen thirty seven, she told her own story to a writer from the federal government. She didn't know her age. The writer guessed she might be close to a hundred. She said she was born in Morocco, and that she had a husband and three children when she was stolen. She was taken to a place in France called Bordeaux and given drugged coffee, and when she came to, she was in the bottom of a boat. She was sold off an auction block in New Orleans, and chained together with other enslaved people. If one of them drank from a stream, she said, they all had to drink. She was sold to a planter in Fayette County, Texas, and ended up cooking in the big house. She said her master knew General Sam Houston, and that she saw Houston many a time. When the writer met her, she was living near Marlin with her great-grandson. And she had one more remarkable claim. In nineteen twenty, she said, two new teeth came through.

RoadyGoat →

He Read the Warrants Out Loud RoadyGoat

On October twenty-sixth, eighteen eighty five, a young Limestone County deputy did everything by the book, and it cost him his life. Deputy Sheriff Levi Drinkard was twenty-seven. He rode out with a posse to arrest three men wanted for stealing horses, holed up in a cabin near Kosse. The posse surrounded the cabin and ordered the men to come out. Then Drinkard read the warrants out loud. The men inside answered with a rifle. Drinkard was killed, and the suspects fled. Two of them were caught later. One had been shot in the leg, and a week later the leg had to be amputated. The record that survives doesn't tell us their names, or what the courts did with them. Levi Drinkard's name is on the Limestone County Sheriff's Office memorial.

RoadyGoat →

Silvia King

1803

Born in Morocco, Silvia King (also written as Sylvia King) was well into adulthood and married with three children when she was kidnapped and brought to Bordeaux, France by slave traders. King recalled receiving drugged coffee before she was forced into the bottom of a ship with other enslaved Africans for the Middle Passage to New Orleans. King was purchased on the auction block in New Orleans by Master Jones, planter and owner of a large cotton plantation. She was then chained to the other purchased slaves and forced to march more than 450 miles by an overseer to La Grange, Texas. Jones placed King in a marriage with another slave, referred to as Bob, against her will. An exceptional cook, she prepared Master Jones' meals full time and completed other domestic tasks such as weaving cotton cloth for use on the plantation. The federally sponsored Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project documented King's extensive oral history in Marlin, Texas in 1937. From her narrative, one can gather a clear glimpse of the hardships that slaves endured and acts of resistance such as the ring shout, an emotionally charged, symbolic dance where slaves came together to gain cultural and spiritual sustenance from one another. After King gained her freedom, she went on to marry twice more and serve as a member of the Galilee Colored Baptist Church in Rosebud. Following King's statement that she was born in 1803, her death certificate state that she passed away on Nov. 10, 1937, at the age of 133, making her age a point of debate and legend. (2012)

Historical Marker → · 4.6 mi away

Steele, Alfonso

1836

Alfonso (Alphonso) Steele, last Texas survivor of the battle of San Jacinto , was born on April 9, 1817, to a pioneer family in Hardin County, Kentucky. At the age of seventeen he traveled by flatboat down the Mississippi River to Lake Providence, Louisiana, and there in November 1835 joined Capt. Ephraim M. Daggett 's company of volunteers bound for Texas to aid in the revolution. They arrived in Washington-on-the-Brazos on New Year's Day 1836 but quickly disbanded, since the Texans had not yet declared their independence. Many volunteers returned home, but Steele stayed, working in a hotel and grinding corn for bread to feed the delegates gathered to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence . Once independence was declared, Steele set out with a company of men under Capt. Joseph L. Bennett to join William B. Travis in San Antonio, but when they reached the Colorado River they received word that the Alamo had fallen. Near Beeson's Crossing on the Colorado the company fell in with Gen. Sam Houston 's army on its retreat from Gonzales and marched under Houston's command to Buffalo Bayou. In the battle of San Jacinto Steele was a private in Capt. James Gillespie's company of Sidney Sherman 's regiment. He was severely wounded in the first volleys of the battle but continued in the fight until it ended. Houston rode Steele's gray horse through much of the battle, until the animal was shot beneath him. After months of recuperation, Steele was discharged and made his way to Montgomery County, where he farmed and raised cattle. There he married Mary Ann Powell on September 28, 1838. In 1844 they moved to a part of Robertson County later organized into Limestone County; they resided there until Mrs. Steele's death in 1903. The couple had ten children and many descendants who distinguished themselves in military service. In 1907 Steele revisited the San Jacinto battleground at the invitation of Houston's son, Andrew Jackson Houston , and retraced the course of the historic engagement. On February 10, 1909, the Thirty-first Texas Legislature honored him as one of two living survivors of the battle of San Jacinto. A poem entitled "The Last Hero" was written and dedicated to him by Jake H. Harrison. Steele died on July 8, 1911, near Kosse, at the home of a grandson, and was buried in Mexia. A portrait of him hangs in the Capitol .

Tsha Handbook →

Foster, William Henry

1922

William Henry Foster, geologist who discovered the unusual Kosse Oil Field, was born at West Plains, Missouri, on December 23, 1891. He was the son of the Rev. Henry Bowman Foster, a Methodist clergyman, and Mary Elizabeth (Chandler) Foster. Foster was a graduate of Drury College and received his master of science degree from the University of Kansas in 1914. In 1916 he joined the staff of F. Julius Fohs’s highly successful geological consulting firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At a time when many wildcatters were little more than gamblers or dowsers, Fohs and his university-trained team sought to establish petroleum geology as a respected science. In 1919 Fohs selected Foster to accompany him to Egypt and Palestine as emissaries of the Zionist Commission to hunt for mineral resources which might support the founding of a Jewish homeland. British troops under Gen. Edmund Allenby were assigned to guard the two geologists, who came under fire at least once from Arab bandits. Their report to the British War Office led to the establishment of cement manufacturing and mineral extracting plants on the Dead Sea. Returning to the United States, Foster was ordered to Mexia in Limestone County, where the Mexia Oil Field was proving to be a milestone in the history of Texas oil as the first fault-line field and the first producing from the rich and pervasive Woodbine Sand ( see WOODBINE FAULT-LINE FIELDS ). Foster now joined in the development of the Mexia area and often said in later life how proud he was to have been part of this critical breakthrough in the history of oil exploration . Here in the small town of Kosse, twenty-eight miles south of Mexia, he experienced one of the most bizarre adventures ever to befall a geologist. Having worked out the fault-line geology, he invited his future wife, Carrie Annette Berry of Mexia, to drive the stake for the discovery well of the Kosse Field. On August 18, 1922, the Jones No. 1 well blew in with hitherto unheard-of force but three days later mysteriously ceased to flow. Later work turned Kosse into a small producer, but it never fulfilled its initial promise and is still a text-book example of a one-well oil field. Foster married Berry on October 3, 1922. They had three children. In 1922 Foster and Wilhelm A. Reiter , the discoverer of the Mexia Field, left the Fohs organization to form Foster-Reiter Consulting Geologists and the Reiter Oil Corporation. These successful companies evolved into the Reiter-Foster Oil Corporation, with offices in Dallas, Tulsa (where Foster made his home), and New York. The young company prospered and helped to develop, among others, the Woodson Field in Throckmorton County and the immense Cushing Oil Field in Oklahoma. In the 1930s Foster became an independent with headquarters in Dallas and helped to discover and develop many oil and gas fields in Texas and Louisiana. One of his most significant finds was the discovery of natural gas for the first time in the Crane Trend of the Petit Lime in Panola County, Texas. His other interests included silver prospecting in Durango, Mexico. Foster was a member of the honorary scientific society Sigma Xi and a charter member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. He died on December 16, 1969, in Dallas and was buried in Sparkman Hillcrest Memorial Park there. His son, William Henry Foster, Jr., became an independent geologist operating out of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Tsha Handbook →

Long Branch Cemetery

1870

This graveyard, one of the oldest in Falls County, was used for the interment of African-Americans for more than a century. Founded by former slaves in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church of Long Branch (later Long Branch United Methodist Church), it covers more than three acres surrounded by farm land. The cemetery is the last surviving vestige of the Long Branch community. The earliest names associated with the settlement, including Thornton Craig, Jim Furry, Jessie Smith, Edmond Taylor and Nelson Weatherspoon, were all here by June 1870. Records do not indicate whether these men and their families were in the community as slaves or arrived after emancipation. Most came from Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Long Branch citizens built a two-room school house and chose educators from their ranks. Many made their living by tenant farming, working manual labor in nearby towns and taking in boarders, and several became landowners. They also served their country in military conflicts from the Civil War to Vietnam, including Anthony Shaw, Co. G, 104th U. S. Colored Infantry, who is buried here. On September 20, 1883, community trustees bought land from William M. Stephens to establish a hall of worship and an eternal resting place for those calling Long Branch home. While cemetery interments exceed 200, some early burials went unrecorded. Among the decedents are the remains of 25 freed slaves. One of these, Silvia King, recorded valuable personal and cultural history in the 1930s before she died at age 133. The school at Long Branch closed in 1950, and the church closed in 1971 and later burned. This important community burial ground remains an active cemetery. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2010

Historical Marker → · 4.6 mi away

Kosse, TX

1869

Kosse is on State highways 14 and 7 near the Falls county line in southwestern Limestone County. Settlers made homes by nearby Duck Creek in the mid-1840s and ran a stage stop for the Franklin-Springfield and Waco-Marlin stage routes. In 1869 Kosse became the end of the Houston and Texas Central Railway and was named for Theodore Kosse, a chief engineer for the railroad and the man who surveyed the road for the town. Businesses moved to Kosse from Eutaw, two miles west, and the Eutaw post office was moved to Kosse in 1870. Development of a town government began in 1871. The community reached a population of 500 by 1880. Union, Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches were organized. The New Era , the first newspaper, was published before 1880. The Cyclone was begun in 1885 by James O. Jones. That year the town had several cotton gins, two sawmills, and three gristmills. John Dimelow, an Englishman, opened a ceramics lab in 1870. Kosse also had the first brickyard in the county. On October 1, 1884, an acre of land was granted for a public school. Around 1892–93 Kosse became an independent school district with J. Thomas Hall as superintendent. In 1893 one school in Kosse had 225 students and six teachers, and another school had eighty black students. In 1914 Kosse had three businesses, two banks, and a population of 700. In 1921 the chamber of commerce was organized. By 1928 the population was 1,500, and by 1931 Kosse had fifty-eight businesses. After that the population and number of businesses slowly began to decline. The Kosse schools were consolidated with the Groesbeck Independent School District in 1968. In 1989 Kosse had eleven businesses and a population of 519. In 1990 the population was 505. The population was 497 in 2000.

Tsha Handbook →

Kosse Tabernacle

1912

After Evangelist Abe Mulkey led a 1912 revival at Kosse Methodist Church, city officials decided to build a tabernacle to accommodate Kosse’s growing religious needs. The frame building, completed that year for $2,000, featured a gable-on-hip roof, banks of paired windows, wooden stage, choir platform and pulpit, and a dirt floor. Originally designed for church functions, it quickly became a community gathering place. Events ranged from dances and singings to fraternal organization meetings and community dinners. In the 1930s, Kosse students attended classes here after the schoolhouse burned. It has also been a polling place and a refuge for hurricane evacuees. The tabernacle has been central to community events in Kosse.

Historical Marker →

Things to Do in Kosse

historical 15.5 mi away
When the New York Giants Called Marlin Home

From 1908 to 1918 manager John McGraw brought the New York Giants all the way down to tiny Marlin Texas for spring training. It was the first permanent spring…
historical 22.8 mi away
The Yellow Fever Train

On September 3 1873 a young man named W.F. Hughes stepped off a train from Shreveport and checked into a Calvert hotel. Two days later he fell ill. Within a…
historical 15.5 mi away
Conrad Hiltons Eighth Hotel and Its Secret Tunnel

In 1929 Conrad Hilton was still building his hotel empire one town at a time. He chose tiny Marlin for his eighth property — an eight-story tower with 110…
historical 15.5 mi away
The Morgan Massacre of 1839

On New Years Day 1839 a band of Anadarko raiders descended on the Morgan cabin near present-day Marlin. Young Isaac Marlin arrived to find his mother and the…
historical 15.6 mi away
The 147-Degree Gusher That Built a City

In 1892 the folks in Marlin drilled a well hoping for drinking water. What they got was a 75-foot geyser of scalding 147-degree sulfur water shooting out of…
historical 15.6 mi away
When 80000 Pilgrims Sought the Healing Waters

By the 1930s word had spread so far that 80000 visitors a year were pouring into Marlin to soak in the hot mineral springs. Bathhouses lined the downtown…
quirky 22.6 mi away
A Victorian Museum That Nobody Planned

Calvert is now the fourth largest historic district in Texas and nobody planned it that way. When the cotton money dried up and the population drained away the…
historical 22.7 mi away
The Largest Cotton Gin in the World

In 1871 tiny Calvert Texas claimed to have the largest cotton gin on the entire planet. The town had exploded after the Houston and Texas Central Railway…

Everything Near Kosse

292 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Sixteen, Passing Through

    In January eighteen seventy, a sixteen-year-old named John Wesley Hardin rode through Kosse on his way to Brenham, and by his own account, he left a dead man behind. Hardin would become one of the most notorious gunmen…

  • Steele, Alfonso · Tsha Handbook

    Alfonso (Alphonso) Steele, last Texas survivor of the battle of San Jacinto , was born on April 9, 1817, to a pioneer family in Hardin County, Kentucky. At the age of seventeen he traveled by flatboat down the…

  • In Her Own Words: Silvia King

    In a cemetery a few miles southwest of Kosse lies a woman named Silvia King, and in nineteen thirty seven, she told her own story to a writer from the federal government. She didn't know her age. The writer guessed she…

  • He Read the Warrants Out Loud

    On October twenty-sixth, eighteen eighty five, a young Limestone County deputy did everything by the book, and it cost him his life. Deputy Sheriff Levi Drinkard was twenty-seven. He rode out with a posse to arrest…

  • Foster, William Henry · Tsha Handbook

    William Henry Foster, geologist who discovered the unusual Kosse Oil Field, was born at West Plains, Missouri, on December 23, 1891. He was the son of the Rev. Henry Bowman Foster, a Methodist clergyman, and Mary…

  • The Weekend the South Moved Its Rails

    Kosse is named for Theodore Kosse, the railroad engineer who surveyed the line through here, so here's a railroad story on a scale he would have appreciated. In eighteen eighty six, most railroads in the American South…

  • The Day of Two Noons

    Kosse was built by a railroad, and railroads are the reason your clock reads the way it does. In the early eighteen eighties, North America had more than a hundred forty local times, and different railroads ran their…

  • The Revival That Ran Out of Horse Feed

    In Kosse there's an old tabernacle, built for revival meetings. Revivals like that have deep roots, and one of the biggest on the American frontier happened at Cane Ridge, Kentucky. From August seventh to the twelfth,…

  • Kosse, TX · Tsha Handbook

    Kosse is on State highways 14 and 7 near the Falls county line in southwestern Limestone County. Settlers made homes by nearby Duck Creek in the mid-1840s and ran a stage stop for the Franklin-Springfield and…

  • Two Lawmen From One Small Town

    Kosse is a small town, but it produced two men who rose to the top of American law. Walter Angus Keeling was born in Kosse in eighteen seventy three. He was Limestone County attorney, then county judge, then attorney…

  • Before A. Harris of Dallas, a Store at Eutaw

    Two miles from Kosse stood Eutaw, once the most important town in southern Limestone County. It had stores, churches, a tavern, a blacksmith shop, a stage depot, and a school. And it had the first store of a young…

  • Kosse Tabernacle · 0.1 mi · Historical Marker

    After Evangelist Abe Mulkey led a 1912 revival at Kosse Methodist Church, city officials decided to build a tabernacle to accommodate Kosse’s growing religious needs. The frame building, completed that year for…

Show all 200 nearby places
  • Gunter Cemetery · 0.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Gunter Cemetery, a chronicle of Limestone County pioneers. William 'Billie' Gunter arrived here after the Civil War and, with his wife Laura, raised thirteen children. Their infant son, Evan, was…

  • The King of Western Swing Was Born Here · 0.8 mi

    Right near this small town, a giant of American music was born. On a farm in the Moss Springs area a few miles outside Kosse, James Robert 'Bob' Wills entered the world on March 6, 1905. From these rural Texas…

  • The Engineering That Built a Town · 0.8 mi

    The town of Kosse is, at its core, a product of 19th-century civil engineering. Before 1869, there was nothing here. The Houston and Texas Central Railway decided to build a town at this exact spot as part of a massive…

  • Kosse, TX · 0.8 mi

    Kosse's history began in the mid-1840s as a community known as Eutaw. It became a stage stop for stagecoach routes and later, with the planned route of the Houston and Texas Central Railway, Kosse was established two…

  • Haley, Charles Q. · 0.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of a soldier in the Texas War for Independence! Charles Q. Haley fought in the Texas Revolution between 1835 and 1836. He was a volunteer, answering the call to defend Texas's future.…

  • Eutaw · 1.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Eutaw, a frontier town that thrived in the 1840s and 50s. It sat right on the busy Waco-Marlin and Franklin-Springfield stage routes. Eutaw even had its own post office, a Masonic lodge,…

  • Brown Family Cemetery · 1.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Brown Family Cemetery, a final resting place for a family that shaped Texas history. Ervin and Matilda Brown settled here in 1857, but their son, Thomas Jefferson Brown, served as a Confederate…

  • A hero of San Jacinto William F. Williams · 2.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Reagan, Texas, home of William F. Williams. This Kentuckian met Sam Houston back in Tennessee and followed him all the way to Texas to fight for independence. He was there at the Battle of San…

  • Bassett House · 2.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Bassett House, built in 1875 by Henry Caleb Bassett. He was a Connecticut native who moved to Texas and settled near Kosse. This two-story brick house, one of Limestone County's…

  • Mustang Prairie · 4.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Mustang Prairie, a place that started with a handful of settlers way back in 1834. But things really picked up after the Civil War, especially when the railroad arrived in 1870. Folks from Alabama,…

  • Silvia King · 4.6 mi · Historical Marker

    Born in Morocco, Silvia King (also written as Sylvia King) was well into adulthood and married with three children when she was kidnapped and brought to Bordeaux, France by slave traders. King recalled receiving drugged…

  • Long Branch Cemetery · 4.6 mi · Historical Marker

    This graveyard, one of the oldest in Falls County, was used for the interment of African-Americans for more than a century. Founded by former slaves in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church of Long Branch…

  • Eaton Cemetery · 5.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Eaton Cemetery, the final resting place for a family who helped settle this part of Texas. The Richard Eaton family arrived in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1833</say-as>, part of the…

  • Stranger Community, Cemetery and Churches · 5.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising through Falls County, and right around here, you're passing the site of the old Stranger community. It started out as Blue Ridge way back before 1850. Thomas McKissick Garrett donated land for a school,…

  • Blue Ridge Baptist Church · 7.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Reagan, but this church has been a cornerstone of the community for over 160 years. Blue Ridge Baptist Church was organized back in 1859 by just eleven charter members. Early missionaries like…

  • The Cemetery Is the Only Calendar They Kept · 7.5 mi

    Nobody wrote down when people started farming up here. The way we know is the oldest marked grave in the White Rock cemetery, cut with the year 1870. A church went up in 1873. After that came a school, a gristmill, and…

  • Vinson Cemetery · 7.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Vinson Cemetery near Thornton. Wiley and Phebe Vinson arrived in Texas from Alabama way back in 1851. After settling in Limestone County in 1859, they farmed and ran a gristmill and tanning yard.…

  • A Church, a Graveyard, and Eighty People · 7.5 mi

    There is no post office out here, no store, no sign announcing that you have arrived. What there is, twenty four miles north of Hearne, is a church and a cemetery with about eighty people spread across the farmland…

  • The Banker Who Robbed Thornton's Bank · 7.8 mi

    On a Saturday in November nineteen sixty, a fire broke out in the feed and grain warehouse in Thornton, and police, firemen, and townspeople all hurried over to it. And while they were watching, a well-dressed man…

  • The Sheriff Behind the Oil Drums · 7.8 mi

    On Sunday, May fifteenth, nineteen fifty five, Limestone County Sheriff Harry Dunlap stepped out from behind two oil drums on a farm north of Thornton, to try to reason with a man who had barricaded himself in his…

  • Caught Asleep With a Gun in His Hands · 7.8 mi

    In the summer of nineteen thirty six, two escaped convicts ran out of road near Thornton, and they were caught sound asleep. Luke Trammel and Forrest Gibson broke out of the Retrieve State Farm, a prison farm down in…

  • The Doctor Who Talked the British Out of a Fire · 7.8 mi

    Thornton is named for an early settler, John E. Thornton. But there's another Thornton who saved a piece of American history by talking. Dr. William Thornton was born in seventeen fifty nine in the British Virgin…

  • The Alchemist Locked in a Castle · 7.8 mi

    Around Thornton, the ground holds a fine white clay called kaolin, and in the old days it was used here to make ceramics. That same kind of clay once got a young alchemist locked in a castle. The word kaolin comes from…

  • Hound Dog Was Hers First · 7.8 mi

    Thornton is named for an early settler, not for Big Mama Thornton. But we can't pass up the chance. Willie Mae Thornton, known as Big Mama, was a blues singer. Two young songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, wrote…

  • King-Williams Cemetery · 7.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the King-Williams Cemetery, a final resting place with roots stretching back to Alabama. Bardin King and Elizabeth Susan Salter packed up their young family in 1843, traveling by wagon to Texas.…

  • Thornton, TX (Limestone County) · 7.8 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Thornton, Texas, and right here in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1918</say-as>, this quiet community witnessed a first. Cyrus F. Smythe landed the very first airplane ever seen in…

  • Commencement in Latin · 7.8 mi

    In the eighteen seventies and eighties, a little railroad town of a couple hundred people had a school where graduation was held entirely in Latin. It was the Thornton Male and Female Institute, founded in eighteen…

  • Engineering a Town's Rise and Fall · 7.9 mi

    Thornton's story gets told as a railroad story, and the railroad is in it — but it didn't come first. Settlers were already here in 1868, and the community took its name from John E. Thornton, an early settler, not from…

  • Kimik Kiln · 8.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Limestone County, a place that once baked its future in the heat of pottery kilns. Near here, a German immigrant named Lee Kimik set up his own groundhog kiln in the 1870s. Unlike other potters…

  • Thornton Schools · 8.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Thornton, a town that sprang up with the railroad back in 1871. But this marker tells the story of its schools. Look for the site of the Thornton Male and Female Institute, founded in 1877 by Dr.…

  • Farmed nearly 18,000 acres · 8.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Headsville, where James Alfred Head lived and died. He arrived in Texas in 1835, fought in the War for Independence as a Ranger, and later served in the Republic of Texas Congress. By…

  • James Alfred Head · 8.1 mi · Historical Marker

    James A. Head was a Texas Ranger, veteran of the War for Independence, and Republic of Texas legislator. Born in Georgia in 1797, he moved to Texas in 1835, enlisting at San Felipe de Austin in Silas Parker&#x2019;s…

  • James Alfred Head · 8.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of James Alfred Head, a soldier who fought in the Texas War for Independence. After the fighting, Head didn't hang up his hat. He went on to serve as a Congressman for the Republic of Texas…

  • Ebenezer Baptist Church and Cemetery · 8.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Ebenezer Baptist Church, organized way back in 1865 to serve the Head's Prairie and Headsville communities. It started with 41 members and grew to over 200 by 1897. But by 1958,…

  • Tidwell (Steele Creek) Cemetery and Community · 8.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Tidwell Cemetery, once the heart of a frontier community along Steele Creek. Settlers arrived in the 1850s, calling their growing village Steele Creek, Tidwell, Shady Grove, and…

  • Walnut Creek Cemetery · 8.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Walnut Creek Cemetery, a final resting place that's also the last vestige of a whole community. Back in the 1850s, farming families settled this area. Tradition says the cemetery started before 1869…

  • Odds Community · 8.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Limestone County, near the old Odds Community. Settled around 1854 by the David Barron family, this place was first called Buffalo Mott. But when the post office opened in 1899, the name had to…

  • Bartula, Joseph and Catherine · 9.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Bremond, Texas, and right here is the story of the first Polish settlers in Robertson County. Joseph and Catherine Bartula arrived from Poland in 1873, facing hardships to build a new life. By 1875,…

  • St. Mary's Catholic Church · 9.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bremond, Texas, home to St. Mary's Catholic Church. Founded in 1876, this church was built to serve the Polish immigrants who were settling in this area. The first church was constructed in 1879,…

  • Love High School · 9.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the former Love High School, originally Bremond Colored High School, founded way back in 1920. For decades, this school served the African American community, focusing on vocational and…

  • St. Mary's: The Stone Church the Poles Built Twice · 9.7 mi

    The Gothic stone church rising over North Main Street is the spiritual anchor of Polish Bremond, and the parish actually built it twice. When Joseph Bartula's family arrived in 1875 there was no Catholic church here at…

  • 2016 UIL 2A Division 2 Football State Champions · 10.1 mi

    Bremond High School (Bremond, TX): Most recent: 49-28 over Iraan · 2016 2A Division 2 final.

  • How a Railroad Stop Became the Polish Capital of Texas · 10.1 mi

    The town around you wears a nickname earned by the people who broke its soil: the Polish Capital of Texas. After the railroad arrived in 1870, a leading citizen named J. C. Roberts began bringing Polish immigrants onto…

  • The First Polish Families and the Names That Stuck · 10.1 mi

    If you want to know who actually started Bremond's Polish colony, start with Joseph and Catherine Bartula. The family emigrated from Brzostek in 1873 and, after a punishing voyage that cost them two young sons, reached…

  • Tiger Stadium: Where a Tiny Town Won Five State Titles · 10.1 mi

    For a town that fields a high school of fewer than 200 kids, Bremond plays football like a heavyweight. From the bleachers at Tiger Stadium you're looking at the home turf of one of the most decorated small-school…

  • The Resort Town Near Bremond That Fire Erased · 10.1 mi

    About three and a half miles west of where you are, there used to be a bustling resort town that has all but vanished. Wootan Wells began in 1878 when farmer Francis Marion Wootan dug a 75-foot well and found water so…

  • The Mule-Drawn Railroad That Hauled Bottled Water · 10.1 mi

    Here's a slice of Robertson County engineering you won't find anywhere else: a railroad pulled by mules. When the Wootan Wells resort got rolling in the early 1880s, its only problem was the gap between the wells and…

  • Polski Dzien: The June Weekend the Whole Town Comes Home · 10.1 mi

    If you pass through downtown Bremond on the fourth weekend of June, you'll find Main Street barricaded and packed, because this is when the Polish Capital of Texas throws its biggest party. Polish Festival Days, known…

  • One Hundred Fifty People For Fifty-Two Years · 10.1 mi

    Here's an odd little piece of bookkeeping. From 1915 all the way through 1967 , fifty-two straight years , Petteway's reported population was one hundred fifty. Not one forty-eight. Not one fifty-two. One hundred fifty,…

  • Why the Healing Water Turned the Dishes Yellow · 10.1 mi

    The mineral water that built a resort near Bremond came with a tell-tale chemical signature, and it's a tidy little science lesson. When Francis Marion Wootan dug his well in 1878, the water that came up stained his…

  • The Town Named for a Railroad Man Who Never Lived Here · 10.1 mi

    You're rolling into a town that owes its very name to a man who almost certainly never settled here. Bremond honors Paul Bremond, the New York-born merchant-turned-railroad-builder who, as president of the Houston and…

  • Cotton, Then Cattle, Then Coal Bought The Place · 10.1 mi

    Three economies have run through this ground, and the last one bought it outright. Cotton first, and cotton built the town. Then after World War Two the cotton fell away and the land turned over to ranching. Then the…

  • Bremond · 10.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bremond, a town with a story that starts with a railroad and a crowd of over a thousand people. In 1869, investors bought this land and immediately granted right-of-way to the Houston and Texas…

  • The Town Is Named After The Storekeeper · 10.1 mi

    Whole community, named after the fellow who ran the store. Mike Petteway kept the general store out here on the prairie in the last quarter of the 1800s, and when the settlement needed something to call itself, it just…

  • Three Churches And Two Schools, Once · 10.1 mi

    By 1900 this stretch of north Robertson County prairie was carrying three churches, two schools, three stores, a cotton gin and a gristmill. That is a genuine town's worth of infrastructure sitting out in the open…

  • The Night the Owl Left the Rails at Hammond · 10.2 mi

    In the dark early hours of January fourteenth, nineteen eighteen, the Houston and Texas Central's northbound train number seventeen came through Hammond, six miles south of Bremond, and seventeen people never made it…

  • Bremond, TX · 10.2 mi

    Bremond's history is marked by pivotal moments that shaped its identity. The town was named after Paul Bremond, an entrepreneur who founded the Houston, East and West Texas Railroad in 1875. His land later became the…

  • The Footprint in the Ashes · 10.2 mi

    In August eighteen seventy six, a man named James Monroe was found dying in his house about three miles from Bremond, and the case against his killer came down to a footprint. Neighbors found bare footprints in the…

  • Nuns in the Public School · 10.2 mi

    For about fifteen years, Bremond had a public school taught by Catholic nuns, and it ended up in court. In nineteen forty seven, worried about losing state money for school buses, the Bremond school board agreed with…

  • The Ghost Who Ordered a Railroad · 10.2 mi

    Bremond is named for Paul Bremond, a Houston railroad builder, and by his own account, one of his railroads was suggested by a ghost. Bremond was born in New York City in eighteen ten, came to Texas, and as president of…

  • Able, Mary Nees · 10.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Bremond, Texas, the birthplace of Mary Nees Able. Born in 1927, she became a pioneering aviator, starting her flying career to share an activity with her husband. But Mary didn't just fly; she…

  • Heards Prairie Cemetery · 10.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Heards Prairie Cemetery, but this place remembers a violent beginning. Back in 1841, an Indian ambush in this area claimed the life of Major G. W. Heard. That event gave Heards Prairie…

  • The Polish Deli on Main Street · 10.2 mi

    If the festival isn't in town, you can still taste Polish Bremond any day of the week at the Bremond Polish Food Store, parked at 304 South Main Street in the heart of downtown. This is not a tourist gimmick; it's a…

  • The Switch at the Bremond Junction · 10.2 mi

    Early one morning in November nineteen twenty two, a misplaced switch at Bremond sent a passenger train into the back of a waiting sleeper. Bremond was where the Waco branch split from the main line. A mixed train,…

  • Pulaski's Charge · 10.2 mi

    Bremond grew into one of the most Polish towns in Texas, so here's a Polish hero of the American Revolution. Casimir Pulaski came to America after Benjamin Franklin recommended him to George Washington. He wrote that he…

  • Grace United Methodist Church · 10.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bremond, and right here is the site of Grace United Methodist Church. This congregation started way back in 1868, as the Bremond Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with Reverend John R. White…

  • Cobb Cemetery · 10.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Cobb Cemetery, established in the 1850s on land owned by Pinckney Cobb, who married Mary Ellen Davis. Her father, Brinkley Davis, had moved here from Indiana in 1833 and received a huge land grant.…

  • Bremond, TX · 10.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Bremond, a town that owes its very existence to a railroad and a group of ambitious investors. Back in 1869, William Baker and his partners, including William M. Rice, bought this land and laid…

  • Paul Bremond · 10.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bremond, a town named for a man who helped build Texas. Paul Bremond, a New York native, arrived in Texas in 1839. He became a key financier and railroad builder, leading the Houston and Texas…

  • First Baptist Church of Bremond · 10.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bremond, and right here is the site of the First Baptist Church. Local stories say it started way back in 1865, but the first official record puts a Bremond Baptist Church in existence by 1869.…

  • Little Poland on the Prairie · 10.7 mi

    The soul of Bremond resides in its Polish heritage, a story that began with a bold journey in the 1870s. Families left Prussian-ruled Poland seeking freedom and opportunity — Joseph and Catherine Bartula were the first…

  • Fuel from Ancient Swamps · 10.7 mi

    The farmland around Bremond hides an ancient energy source: lignite coal. This isn't the hard, black coal of the Appalachian Mountains; it's a younger, softer, brownish coal that formed around 50 million years ago when…

  • The Town the Railroad Built and Left Behind · 10.7 mi

    Driving down Main Street, you're looking at the legacy of a railroad boom. Surveyors laid Bremond out in 1869 for the Houston and Texas Central, and on June 15, 1870, the first train pulled in with over a thousand…

  • Bremond, TX · 10.7 mi

    In 1916, a devastating fire struck the community of Bremond, dealing a heavy blow to the resort community of Wootan Wells. This event, along with flooding and drought, contributed to the decline of the town, and a…

  • The Aggie Barn · 11.0 mi · Magazine Article

    You're rolling past one of the most photographed barns in Texas. Out here in Reagan, on Highway 6 between Waco and College Station, sits a wooden building painted maroon and white with the words Gig 'em Aggies sprawled…

  • Big Hill Cemetery · 11.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Big Hill Cemetery, established in 1888. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2006.

  • Criswell Cemetery · 11.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through the old Criswell Cemetery, a burial ground that's been here since at least 1873. The earliest marked graves belong to C.M. Criswell and Thomas Durham. An association formed in 1950 still maintains…

  • Hope Cemetery · 11.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Hope Cemetery, a place that started as a promise in 1873. Falls County Judge W.R. Reagan donated 10 acres to Hope Baptist Church, envisioning it as a place for worship, education, and rest. The first…

  • Site of Old Potter's Shop · 12.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of an old pottery shop, a real engine of industry here in Limestone County. Starting in the 1840s, this shop used fine, white kaolin clay mined nearby to create everything from everyday jars…

  • Wootan Wells · 12.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Wootan Wells, a famous health spa and resort that once drew socialites from miles around. The first well was dug way back in 1878 by Francis Wootan. Now, the water tasted good, but it…

  • Isaac Phillip Stem · 13.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bald Prairie, and right here is the resting place of Isaac Phillip Stem. Born in Tennessee, Stem's military career started in 1836. He moved to Texas that same year, joining the Republic of Texas…

  • Bald Prairie Church of Christ · 13.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Bald Prairie, where a church has been a cornerstone of community life for over 170 years. Organized way back in 1847, this Church of Christ fellowship first shared space with Baptists, then built…

  • Bald Prairie Cemetery · 13.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising through Bald Prairie, and right here is where the community rests. This land was given to the public in 1848 by Elijah Rains, a prominent citizen who arrived from Tennessee that year. Soon, folks from…

  • Harrison, General Thomas · 13.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Reagan area, home to General Thomas Harrison. He was one of only three Texas brothers to reach general rank in the Confederate Army. Before the Civil War, Harrison fought in the Mexican War and…

  • Sarahville de Viesca, Site of Colonial Capital · 13.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Sarahville de Viesca, the capital of Sterling C. Robertson's vast colony. Founded in 1834 near the Brazos River's falls, this was the place where settlers came to claim their land titles.…

  • Falls County · 13.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Falls County, named for the very falls on the Brazos River that cut through its heart. White settlers were here even before the Texas Revolution, but they fled when Santa Anna was on the march in…

  • Site of Oletha Common School · 13.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Oletha Common School, a place that was once the heart of its community. Back in 1934, several smaller rural school districts combined to form the Oletha Common School District. A…

  • Ferguson Cemetery · 14.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Limestone County, passing the site of the Ferguson Cemetery. This land was part of Ferguson Prairie, settled in the 1830s by Joseph and Hannah Ferguson, pioneers who arrived years before Texas was…

  • Cox Cemetery · 14.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Cox Cemetery, established in the Ferguson Prairie community. Arkansas native Obediah Cox settled here in 1864 after serving in the Civil War. His wife, Angeline, died and was buried here in February…

  • Thompson Cemetery · 14.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Thompson Cemetery. A native of North Carolina, Benjamin Rush Thompson (1811-1880) migrated to Milam County in the Republic of Texas in 1841. Thompson was a Mason and according to the census of 1850,…

  • Roberts, Sion · 14.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Groesbeck, and right here is the story of Sion Roberts. He was a soldier in the Texas War for Independence, and he fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. That was the battle that ultimately…

  • John Sadler · 14.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the resting place of John Sadler, a veteran of the Texas Revolution. He arrived in Texas back in 1833, just a few years before the fight for independence. Sadler answered the call, serving as a…

  • Highlands Mansion · 14.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Highlands Mansion, built around 1898 by B. C. Clark. This elegant home was a real showplace of Texas during the Gay Nineties, right at the turn of the century. Notice the sturdy cypress…

  • Union Community · 14.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through the historic Union Community, originally settled by Joseph and Hannah Ferguson back around 1847. It was first known as Ferguson Prairie, then even called Ivanhoe on some old maps. But the name…

  • The Girl Who Didn't Want to Come Home · 15.0 mi

    In May of eighteen thirty-six — the same spring Texas declared independence — a force of Comanche, Kiowa, and allied warriors raided Fort Parker. Among the captives taken was a girl named Cynthia Ann Parker, estimated…

  • The Accidental Spa · 15.3 mi

    Imagine the scene in 1892. The city of Marlin is drilling a new well, hoping for fresh drinking water. Instead, at over three thousand feet, they hit a gusher of foul-smelling, scalding hot water. It seemed like a total…

  • The Voice of Marlin, Heard in Deep Space · 15.3 mi

    As you pass through Marlin, picture a man on a street corner, a tin cup tied around his neck, playing a slide guitar with a pocketknife. That man was Blind Willie Johnson, a gospel blues master who lived here for part…

  • The Journey of the Water · 15.3 mi

    The hot water that defined Marlin isn't just hot; it's ancient, and how it reaches you is a fascinating piece of hydro-geology. The story starts with rain falling on Central Texas, seeping deep into the ground and…

  • Marlin, TX · 15.3 mi

    Marlin, Texas, has a rich history that dates back to 1851 when it became the county seat of Falls County. The town was named in honor of John Marlin, a former alcalde of Robertson County. The first courthouse was a log…

  • The Man from Marlin Who Shaped the World · 15.3 mi

    The Falls County Courthouse marks the start of a career that reached the whole world. Tom Connally was born on a farm in McLennan County in 1877, took a law degree at the University of Texas in 1898, and practiced law…

  • Nesbitt Cemetery and Beck Prairie Baptist Church · 15.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Nesbitt Cemetery and the site of the old Beck Prairie Baptist Church. This place started as a community burial ground back in 1875, with the first recorded burial being infant Florence McCrary. The…

  • A Voice From Marlin Now Traveling Between the Stars · 15.4 mi

    A sound that once rang out on Marlin's streets is now drifting through interstellar space. Blind Willie Johnson was probably born near Brenham, but his family moved to Marlin when he was a small child. Here he learned…

  • The Drinking-Water Well That Erupted at 147 Degrees · 15.4 mi

    You're rolling into a town that got rich by accident. In 1892, the city of Marlin was drilling for an ordinary water supply when, at a depth of 3,350 feet, the well struck intensely hot, mineralized water that…

  • When the New York Giants Trained in Marlin · 15.4 mi

    For a stretch of the early 1900s, this small Central Texas town was a Major League laboratory. Beginning in 1904, Marlin hosted all or part of spring training for five big-league clubs, and the New York Giants made it…

  • Conrad Hilton's Spa Hotel and Its Long Decay · 15.4 mi

    The big, brooding building ahead is Marlin's most dramatic reminder of its spa years. Conrad Hilton opened his eighth hotel here in 1929 to serve the mineral-water trade, a 110-room landmark later known as the Falls…

  • The Accidental Geothermal Engineering of Marlin · 15.4 mi

    Marlin's hot well is one of the best place-specific science stories in Central Texas. An artesian well taps groundwater confined under pressure, so when drilling punctures the pressurized formation, water can rise on…

  • The Pioneer Who Never Saw His Town · 15.4 mi · Things to Do

    John Marlin packed up his family and headed to Mexican Texas in 1832 with nothing but grit and a plan. He built a frontier fort on the Brazos and held his…

  • The Hot Water Pavilion on Coleman Street · 15.4 mi

    On Coleman Street near the Falls Hotel stands the Hot Water Pavilion, built in 1916 at the height of Marlin's spa fever. In its prime it sheltered a continuously flowing mineral-water fountain, benches, and a soda or…

  • The Museum That Came Back After the Storm · 15.4 mi

    At 145 Heritage Row, the Falls County Historical Museum has a survival story of its own. It reopened in December 2024 after sitting closed for nearly four years, shut down when tornado and hail damage compromised its…

  • The Palace Theatre on Heritage Row · 15.4 mi

    At about 133 Heritage Row stands the Palace Theatre, a survivor from the 1920s, the same boom decade that gave Marlin its grand hotels and its hot-water crowds. Over its long life the Palace has worn several hats: movie…

  • Marlin's Decades-Old Juneteenth Tradition · 15.4 mi

    Marlin has marked Juneteenth as a citywide tradition for decades, long before it became a national holiday. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and announced…

  • Hammond · 15.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Hammond, a ghost town that once thrived along the railroad. Dr. Ben F. Hammond, arriving from Alabama in 1853, established a plantation nearby. In 1869, he granted land for the Houston &…

  • Falconer Home · 15.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Falconer Home, built way back in 1880. Now, this wasn't always a private residence. For a few years, it was Stafford Military Academy, a school for boys. But financial troubles shut the doors in…

  • Fort Milam · 15.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Fort Milam, built way back in 1835. It started as a protection for settlers against hostile Indians. The fort was constructed by a ranging company right here in what was then Sarahville…

  • Personville Cemetery · 15.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Limestone County, passing the Personville Cemetery. Established around 1891, this burial ground was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2002.

  • When the New York Giants Called Marlin Home · 15.5 mi · Things to Do

    From 1908 to 1918 manager John McGraw brought the New York Giants all the way down to tiny Marlin Texas for spring training. It was the first permanent spring…

  • Conrad Hiltons Eighth Hotel and Its Secret Tunnel · 15.5 mi · Things to Do

    In 1929 Conrad Hilton was still building his hotel empire one town at a time. He chose tiny Marlin for his eighth property — an eight-story tower with 110…

  • The Morgan Massacre of 1839 · 15.5 mi · Things to Do

    On New Years Day 1839 a band of Anadarko raiders descended on the Morgan cabin near present-day Marlin. Young Isaac Marlin arrived to find his mother and the…

  • Lakeview Drive-In, Serving Marlin Since 1946 · 15.5 mi

    If you want a meal with real Marlin history under it, Lakeview Drive-In at 1008 North Business Highway 6 is the pick. Its roadside sign advertises service to Marlin since 1946, which gives it the genuine character of a…

  • Captain Henry Gray Carter · 15.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of a house built by Captain Henry Gray Carter, a man who saw action on both the frontier and the battlefield. Born in Vermont, Carter moved to Texas in 1852 and soon after, enlisted in the…

  • Greater Providence Missionary Baptist Church · 15.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Greater Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Marlin. Imagine this: back in 1893, a group of twelve people, led by Reverend N.T. Denson, founded Providence Baptist Church. They started…

  • First United Methodist Church of Marlin · 15.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the First United Methodist Church of Marlin, a place with roots stretching way back. Methodist preachers were serving folks in this area as early as 1842, long before Marlin was even a city! The…

  • Sent Maggie Rogers to China · 15.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the First United Methodist Church of Marlin, a place with roots stretching way back. Missionary preachers were serving Methodists in this area even before Falls County was officially established. The…

  • Johnson, "Blind Willie" · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through North Texas, and right here is the region where a true blues legend got his start. Blind Willie Johnson, known as the 'Sightless Visionary,' was born near Brenham in 1897. Legend says his…

  • The 147-Degree Gusher That Built a City · 15.6 mi · Things to Do

    In 1892 the folks in Marlin drilled a well hoping for drinking water. What they got was a 75-foot geyser of scalding 147-degree sulfur water shooting out of…

  • When 80000 Pilgrims Sought the Healing Waters · 15.6 mi · Things to Do

    By the 1930s word had spread so far that 80000 visitors a year were pouring into Marlin to soak in the hot mineral springs. Bathhouses lined the downtown…

  • Coryell, James · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    James Coryell, for whom Coryell County was named, was born near West Union, Ohio, in 1803, the son of Lewis and Sarah (Voshall) Coryell. He left home at the age of eighteen and made his way to Texas. He was in San…

  • Falls County · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Falls County, and right here, the Brazos River was once a deadly frontier. In early 1839, this area was a hunting ground for various Native American tribes, but tensions were high with settlers.…

  • Slater, Stephen Thomas · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Milam County, maybe not far from Marlin, where Stephen Thomas Slater once brought the Comanche people in to sign a treaty. Arriving in Texas in 1837, Slater served with Captain Jack Hays and…

  • Marlin, TX · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Marlin, Texas, a town with roots stretching back to 1834. It started as Sarahville de Viesca, established by Sterling Clack Robertson. But the real boom came when they discovered something special…

  • The Ghost Colony of Sarahville de Viesca · 15.6 mi · Things to Do

    In 1834 Sterling Robertson founded a grand colonial settlement at the falls of the Brazos and named it Sarahville de Viesca. It was meant to be the capital of…

  • The Haunted Hilton That No One Checks Into · 15.6 mi · Things to Do

    The 1929 Falls Hotel rises eight stories above downtown Marlin and every single room is empty. No guests have checked in for decades but visitors swear the…

  • The Only City Crowned by the Texas Legislature for Its Water · 15.6 mi · Things to Do

    In 1999 the Texas Legislature did something it had never done before — it officially crowned Marlin the Hot Mineral Water City of Texas. No other town in the…

  • Lang, Willis L. · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Willis L. Lang, planter, Texas Ranger, and Confederate Army officer, the youngest of five children of William A. and Temperance (Thurman) Lang, was born on November 29, 1830, in Wayne County, Mississippi. He and his…

  • Billingsley, Virginia Catherine Shaw · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Falls County, not far from Marlin, where V. C. Billingsley took over a family plantation after her husband died in 1882. She wasn't just managing the land; she was a shrewd businesswoman. In 1889,…

  • Doughty, Walter Francis · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Falls County, and right here in Marlin, a significant figure in Texas education once served. Walter Francis Doughty, a Mississippi native who arrived in Texas in 1895, rose through the ranks from…

  • Abram Anglin · 15.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the marker for Abram Anglin, born right here on December 28th, 1817. He was an early Ranger, serving in Captain Seale's Company from 1835 to 1836. That company was organized by order of the Council…

  • Brown, William M. · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving past Marlin, Texas, a town that became home to William M. Brown after the Civil War. Brown served as a Confederate lieutenant, fighting at Gettysburg before being captured. After the war, he came to…

  • Hunnicutt, Walter Scott · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Marlin, Texas, the hometown of Walter Scott Hunnicutt. While he served as a city attorney and later a county judge, and even fought in World War II, Hunnicutt is best remembered for his music.…

  • Scoggins, Lewis Grissom · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Falls County, Texas, and right here in Marlin, Lewis Grissom Scoggins lived out his final years. Scoggins, a planter from Louisiana, arrived in Texas sometime before 1863 and joined the Third…

  • Stuart, Elias Charles · 15.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Falls County, the heart of Texas politics for Elias Charles Stuart. Born in Mississippi in 1820, Stuart eventually settled here along the Brazos River around 1857. He became a prominent farmer and…

  • First Baptist Church of Marlin · 15.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Marlin, and right here is the site of the First Baptist Church. Back in 1852, this congregation started with just ten members, meeting in borrowed spaces like the log courthouse and a schoolhouse.…

  • Hilton Hotel, Early · 15.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the eighth hotel ever built by Conrad Hilton, right here in Marlin. After starting his legendary hotel empire in Cisco, Hilton dreamed of a Texas covered in his hotels. This place was a…

  • Faulkenberry Cemetery · 15.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Faulkenberry Cemetery, a resting place with roots going way back to the earliest days of Limestone County. David Faulkenberry, born around 1795, came to Texas in 1835 with a group from Illinois,…

  • Hot Mineral Water · 15.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Marlin, and right here, history bubbled up! In 1892, folks drilled this site looking for water, but they found something much hotter: 48,000 gallons of hot mineral water every single day. At…

  • The Vanishing Waterfalls That Named a County · 15.7 mi · Things to Do

    Falls County got its name from a set of 10-foot waterfalls on the Brazos River — the only hard-bottom crossing within 200 miles. Native tribes had used them…

  • First Presbyterian Church of Marlin · 15.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the First Presbyterian Church of Marlin, but its story starts way back in 1852. Imagine this: services were held in the Falls County Courthouse, with a pulpit that literally got pulled up…

  • Denson, Rev. Nelson T. and Marlin Missionary Baptist Church · 15.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site where a true Texas pioneer once walked. Nelson Taylor Denson was born into slavery in Arkansas in 1845. Brought to Falls County as a boy, he served in the Confederate Army before returning…

  • Bucksnort · 15.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're passing through the area where Bucksnort once stood. Settled in 1837 by the Marlin and Menefee families, it quickly became Jarett Menefee's Supply Station. By the 1840s, this village was booming with a school,…

  • The Settler, Not the Fish · 15.9 mi

    Marlin, Texas, was named for a person, not an ocean fish. John Marlin came to Mexican Texas in the early eighteen thirties, settled in Robertson's Colony, received a land grant east of the Brazos, and served in local…

  • The Females Become Giants · 15.9 mi

    Blue marlin have one of the most dramatic size differences between sexes among large game fish. Females can grow several times heavier than males and account for the true giants celebrated in fishing lore. Both hunt…

  • Hemingway's Marlin · 15.9 mi

    The giant fish in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is a marlin. Santiago's struggle with it made the animal a literary symbol of strength, pride, endurance, and respect between hunter and quarry. The story…

  • A Fast Fish Caught by Slow Lines · 15.9 mi

    Marlin conservation is tied to fisheries aimed at other species. Commercial longlines set vast numbers of baited hooks for tuna and swordfish and can catch marlin as bycatch. Scientists use catch records and electronic…

  • The 1922 Brazos Bridge Collapse · 15.9 mi

    West of Marlin, where the road once crossed the Brazos toward Belton, a crowd gathered on May 16, 1922 to watch repair work while the river ran high at flood stage. By some accounts roughly 1,000 people had come out to…

  • A Bill Is Not a Sword · 15.9 mi

    A marlin and a swordfish both carry long bills, but they are not the same design. Marlin have a more cylindrical, streamlined body and a dorsal fin that can be conspicuous, while swordfish have a flatter, sword-like…

  • Built to Cross an Ocean · 15.9 mi

    Marlin are open-ocean predators built for sustained fast travel. A tapered body reduces drag, a narrow tail base drives a stiff crescent-shaped tail, and fins can fold close to the body. They follow warm water,…

  • Blue, Black, and Striped · 15.9 mi

    Blue, black, and striped marlin share the billfish plan but differ in range and form. Blue marlin roam tropical and subtropical Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian waters and include the largest females. Black marlin are an…

  • Stripes That Switch On · 15.9 mi

    A marlin's color is active, not painted on. Dark blue above and silvery sides create countershading, helping the fish blend with deep water from above and bright surface light from below. Blue or striped patterns can…

  • The Fish That Fights Back · 15.9 mi

    Marlin became icons of sport fishing because a hooked fish can run hard, leap repeatedly, and fight for a long time. That fame also created pressure on slow-replacing populations. Many tournaments now encourage…

  • Marlin, TX · 15.9 mi · Local history

    Marlin has been a birthplace for a remarkable array of talent. From the gridiron, we have LaDainian Tomlinson, a celebrated running back for the San Diego Chargers and New York Jets, and Danario Alexander, a wide…

  • The Courthouse They Call the Million Dollar Courthouse · 15.9 mi

    Right in the center of Groesbeck at 200 West State Street stands the Limestone County Courthouse, completed in 1924 and still in active government use. It's a handsome Classical Revival building of reinforced concrete…

  • The Art Moderne Courthouse of Falls County · 15.9 mi

    At the center of Marlin sits the Falls County Courthouse, a limestone Art Moderne building dating from 1937 to 1939, when streamlined, geometric public architecture was the height of civic ambition. It got a major…

  • Marlin · 15.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Marlin, a Texas town that hit its stride thanks to a bit of natural luck. Back in 1851, it became the county seat, and things started to grow. But the real boom came in 1892 when they discovered…

  • Foster, Lafayette Lumpkin · 15.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the marker for Lafayette Lumpkin Foster, a man who helped shape Texas industry. Foster served as Speaker of the House in the late 1800s, then led Texas A&M. But his most impactful role came when…

  • Falls County Courthouse · 15.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Falls County Courthouse in Marlin, a building that's seen a lot of history. Falls County itself was created way back in 1850. The very first courthouse? Just a log cabin, maybe right here. Fast…

  • Limestone County Courthouse · 15.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Groesbeck, and right here is the Limestone County Courthouse. It's seen a few county seats come and go. Springfield was first, but after it burned down, Groesbeck took over in 1873. After a few…

  • Allen House · 15.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Allen House in Marlin, built in 1911 for Dr. Walter and Netti Allen. Check out those massive Ionic columns supporting the giant entablature – a classic Greek Revival look! The family lived here…

  • First Methodist Church of Groesbeck · 15.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're passing the First Methodist Church of Groesbeck, a congregation that got its start way back in 1871. Reverend Mordecai Yell led the very first services that year, meeting in a community building. By 1879, they…

  • Fort Parker and the Two Lives of Cynthia Ann Parker · 16.0 mi

    Near here, in 1833, the Parker family built a fortified settlement on the Texas frontier. On May 19, 1836, a large force of Comanche warriors, joined in some accounts by Kiowa and Caddo allies, approached the stockade.…

  • The Railroad That Built One Town and Erased Another · 16.0 mi

    North of Groesbeck, a single decision by a railroad turned one county seat into a ghost. Before Groesbeck existed, the important town here was Springfield, founded in 1838 near the Navasota River. It became Limestone…

  • The Hand-Built Dam and the Men Who Made It · 16.0 mi

    Approach the lake at Fort Parker State Park and you're looking at one of Groesbeck's best engineering stories, built almost entirely by hand by men history nearly forgot. During the Great Depression, about 200 young…

  • Old Val Verde, the Cannon Buried Under a Buggy House · 16.0 mi

    Out along the Navasota River near Groesbeck sit the Confederate Reunion Grounds, where starting in 1889 former Confederate soldiers and their families gathered for enormous yearly reunions. Special trains rolled in from…

  • The Town That Paved Itself in Its Own Red Clay · 16.0 mi

    Look down as you drive through downtown Groesbeck and you may be rolling over the town's own geology. Several blocks of original red brick paving still survive, laid during the 1920s with help from a federal work…

  • The 2006 Tornado That Crossed the County · 16.0 mi

    On December 29, 2006, an F2 tornado dropped out of the sky near Kosse and tracked north-northeast toward Groesbeck along a path of roughly 20 miles, cutting across the open Limestone County prairie. About four miles…

  • The Reconstructed Stockade at Old Fort Parker · 16.0 mi

    At 866 Park Road 35 just outside Groesbeck stands Old Fort Parker, a full reconstructed stockade that interprets the original Parker family settlement and the 1836 attack that scattered it. Walk inside and you'll find…

  • A Burger Beside the Cattle Auction · 16.0 mi

    If you want a meal wired straight into Limestone County's ranching economy, point the car at Billy B's Sale Barn Cafe, inside the Groesbeck Auction and Livestock Company at 1401 Texas Highway 164. This isn't a place…

  • Groesbeck Lodge No. 354, A.F. & A.M. · 16.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Groesbeck Lodge No. 354, chartered way back in 1872. This Masonic lodge has been a cornerstone of the community for over a century, celebrating its 100th anniversary in 1972. It's seen…

  • Sanson/Wedgman Cemetery · 16.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Sansom/Wedgman Cemetery, a final resting place that's seen life's hardships since Texas's Reconstruction era. Soon after the Civil War, settlers like Dr. J. L. Sansom arrived from Mississippi,…

  • First Baptist Church of Groesbeck · 16.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the First Baptist Church of Groesbeck. When this railroad town was founded in 1871, it bypassed the older settlement of Springfield. Some Baptists from Springfield’s 1846 church moved here,…

  • The Saturday Groesbeck Took Up Arms · 16.2 mi

    In the fall of eighteen seventy one, Groesbeck was barely a year old, and one Saturday afternoon it nearly went to war with the State of Texas. This was Reconstruction. Governor Edmund Davis had a new State Police…

  • Parker, James W. · 16.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Limestone County, not far from Groesbeck, where James W. Parker helped found Fort Parker in 1835. Just a year later, in May of 1836, while Parker was working in his field, the fort was attacked by…

  • Parker, Silas M. · 16.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Limestone County, not far from Groesbeck. Right here, Silas Parker and his brother James built Fort Parker in the spring of 1835. It was meant to protect the frontier, and Silas was even put in…

  • Westbrook, John Hill · 16.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Central Texas, heading towards Baylor University country. Right here, in Groesbeck, John Hill Westbrook was born in 1947. He grew up to become a preacher, but his biggest claim to fame happened on…

  • Seven to Nothing in the Astrodome · 16.2 mi

    In nineteen ninety one, the Groesbeck Goats won a state football championship with exactly one touchdown. They went fourteen and oh that season, and the Class Three A title game was played under the roof of the Houston…

  • The Walking Tall Sheriff Was a Goat · 16.2 mi

    The actor who played one of the toughest sheriffs in movie history grew up in Groesbeck. Joe Don Baker was born here in nineteen thirty six. At Groesbeck High he played basketball, and on the football team he was a…

  • Part Time Love Came From Groesbeck · 16.2 mi

    One of the big rhythm and blues hits of nineteen sixty three was written by a man born in Groesbeck. Clay Hammond was born here in nineteen thirty six. In nineteen fifty six, out in Los Angeles, he became one of the…

  • The Other Groesbeek · 16.2 mi

    Groesbeck is named for Abram Groesbeeck, a Houston railroad man. But across the ocean in the Netherlands, there is a village with almost the same name, Groesbeek, and on September seventeenth, nineteen forty four,…

  • The Goats That Don't Really Faint · 16.2 mi

    Groesbeck's teams are the Goats, so here is a goat story with a twist. There's a breed called the myotonic goat, better known as the fainting goat. Startle one, and its muscles lock up, and it may topple right over. But…

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