A Jesse James Hideout

Allen Parmer joined William C. Quantrill's guerrillas at fifteen, was wounded five times and surrendered at Bardstown, Kentucky, in July 1865. He married Susan James in 1870 and brought her to Texas, first to Grayson County and in 1873 to Gilbert Creek, where federal officers arrested him for an express robbery in Missouri; the charge was dropped. In Wichita Falls he hauled dirt and freight for the Fort Worth and Denver City and managed the T-Fork and Wichita Land and Cattle companies. He later built railroads in five states and died in 1927.

What the plaque says

Jesse James, celebrated 1860s-1882 Missouri outlaw, used to visit in Archer City in house built by Stone Land and Cattle Company for its manager, Allen H. Parmer (1848-1927), his Confederate comrade of the Civil War and husband of his sister Susan (1849-89). With Frank James, his brother and aide, the outlaw chief hid at the Parmers' when hunted for train and bank robberies or on other occasions. Jesse James was killed in 1882; Frank and his wife continued to visit at Parmer's house, which was later moved from original site. Parmer brought up a family of respected, upright citizens. Erected by Archer County Historical Survey Committee. House is shown only by appointment, 1972.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Royal Theater — steps away
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 18 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Kell House Museum — 23 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 23 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.

More markers nearby

• Archer County Discovery Well — steps away
• Camp Cureton, C.S.A. — steps away
• Archer City Methodist Church — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Archer City — steps away