"Texas Historical Commission Celebrates 50 Years of Marking" by Steve Campbell

Texas Historical Commission Celebrates 50 Years of Marking

by Steve Campbell - Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Temple Daily Telegram - February 26, 2012

FORT WORTH - Don Frazier fondly remembers how his father would brake for historical

markers dotting Texas highways and byways.

Standing alongside the road with the sun and wind in his face, the Arlington kid could

squint and envision history unfurling across the Texas plains. Turns out, when Frazier

was imagining that bygone “by-God Indian fight,” he was looking back into his future as

an author of numerous Texas history books.

“The markers are one of the contributing factors for my life in history. It was

accessible history; I had never seen anything like it. I was learning little snippets,

little sound bites on topics that weren’t the Alamo or San Jacinto,” said Frazier, now

a history professor at McMurry University. “All of a sudden this was history that

engaged all of my senses, and it was awesome,” he said.

This year, the markers themselves will be eligible for a plaque: The Texas Historical

Commission is commemorating 50 years of placing those familiar metal markers - 15,740

and counting - where momentous and sometimes minuscule slices of the state’s past

played out.

Before the Commission’s roadside program started in 1962, Texas had just a few thousand

historical markers, most of them in cemeteries, said Bob Brinkman, coordinator of the

program.

“That was the change. They saw the need to interpret history at a place where it really

happened and as a way to engage the traveling public with a reason to go from A to B,”

he said.

Texas has way more markers than any other state, but what makes the self-funded program

unique is that it’s a bottom-up process, said T. Lindsay Baker, a history professor at

Tarleton State University.

“The really significant thing is that this is truly grassroots history that local

people think is of sufficient importance that they go through the bureaucratic process

and raise the money to have these markers placed,” he said.

“In most states, bureaucrats do it.”

Baker “ramrodded” a marker in Strawn to honor Mary Jane Gentry, a historian and

educator who wrote the seventh-grade Texas history textbook that he once studied.

“I’m an example of one of those local people who gets really enthusiastic about an

admittedly narrow topic but thought enough about it to make the nomination and rustle

up the $1,000 to pay for it,” he said.

Historic ground

For sure, the big events and famous names - Sam Houston, San Jacinto, Stephen F. Austin

and the Alamo - get their due in 300 words or fewer.

Houston almost has markers by the mile tracing his trail, including where he first

stepped into Texas, as well as homes, campsites, battlegrounds and even where he bathed

in the spa waters at Sour Lake.

The lure is that people like to go where history happened, said Dan Utley, the former

chief historian for the Texas Historical Commission who also did two stints directing

the marker program.

“They could read it in the books, but it’s not the same as standing on the ground,” he

said.

Sometimes it’s mighty bloody ground.

Bloody ground

Take Baby Head Cemetery, alongside Texas 16 in the rugged country north of Llano, which

was named by locals in the 1850s after a small child was killed by Indians and the

remains were left on the mountain.

There’s also a veritable grove of markers for hanging trees as well as plenty of

macabre sites like Dead Man’s Hole in Marble Falls, where up to 17 bodies were dumped

during the Civil War, and Deadman’s Hill in Maverick County, where three traders were

killed by Indians and their bodies left hanging from the wheels of their carts.

Not to mention a roadside roll call of mostly forgotten massacres that would be global

sensations if they happened today.

Among them are the 1838 Killough Massacre in East Texas, where 18 were killed or

carried away by Mexicans and Indians; the 1840 Comanche Village Massacre in Colorado

City, where 128 Indians were killed by 90 citizen volunteers; and the 1839 Webster

Massacre near Leander, where Comanches wiped out a party of 30 settlers.

Outlaws and hell-raisers along with the lawmen who corralled them also get their five

minutes of roadside acclaim.

Jesse and Frank James, Sam Bass, John Wesley Hardin and Pat Garrett as well as Texas

Rangers and tough sheriffs have plaques.

Rowdy Texans raised Cain in historic watering holes like the Elm, Stonewall and Snake

saloons as well as in Fort Worth’s notorious Hell’s Half Acre, which sports the only

marker that refers to bordellos.

The ordinary people

All that wickedness is colorful, but on the marker roster, sinners are far outnumbered

by churches and burial grounds for common folks.

More than a quarter of the historic signposts are connected to churches (2,159) and

cemeteries (2,174), Brinkman said.

The marker process begins when an applicant researches a topic, writes the history, and

gathers maps and photos. Those five to 50 pages of documentation are submitted to a

county historical commission for review and approval. The Texas Historical Commission

then reviews it before giving the final OK.

The applicant pays $1,000 for a new marker before the state commission’s staff boils

the story down into an inscription. All 254 Texas counties have markers, including

Loving, where a dozen plaques represent 1 for every 6.9 residents. The top marker

counties are Travis (440), Harris (433), Tarrant (379), Dallas (365) and Galveston

(298).

All articles from the Temple Daily Telegram are published with the permission of the
Temple Daily Telegram.
All credit for this article goes to
Jeanne Williams and the Temple Daily Telegram