Alleyton

The plaque counts five Alley brothers as founders; the Handbook of Texas shows how unevenly the frontier treated them. John C. Alley was killed by Karankawas while canoeing up the Colorado near Skull Creek in late 1822 or that winter. Thomas V. Alley, constable of the Colorado District in 1824, drowned crossing the Brazos while campaigning against the Wacos and Tonkawas in 1826. Rawson, the surveyor, twice served as síndico and died in 1833; William B. Travis wrote the petition for his heirs. Abraham lived until 1862 and held fourteen people in slavery by 1860.

What the plaque says

Alleyton Oldest permanent settlement and once largest town in Colorado County. Established by the pioneer Alley family (Willliam, John, Rawson, Thomas and Abraham), all members of Austin's original 300 settlers. Terminus of the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad, 1860-1867.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stafford Opera House — 3.2 mi
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 13 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 21 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 23 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.

More markers nearby

• Alleyton, C.S.A. — 0.4 mi
• Benjamin Beason's Crossing of the Colorado River — 2.9 mi
• Joseph V. Frnka — 3.1 mi
• Robert Henry Harrison, M.D. — 3.1 mi