Alma

Long before the railroad gave Alma its name, the spot beside Willow Pond mattered. The Handbook of Texas says Thomas Smith bought a thousand acres there in the early 1840s, and the pond served as a stagecoach station on the road between Waxahachie and Marshall. A post office arrived around 1881, and the Handbook guesses the name may honor a local banker's daughter. Alma reached about 250 residents in the mid-1920s, lost its post office by 1964, and incorporated in the late 1970s with the interstate already running through the old townsite.

What the plaque says

Alma Settlement of this area began as early as 1848. The town of Alma was established in 1871, when the Houston and Texas Central Railroad was built through Ellis County. C.C. Hemming deeded part of his property for the railroad right-of-way and a town to be named in honor of his daughter, Alma. Soon the town included numerous homes, businesses, churches, and civic organizations. It was the center of a farming community until the 1950s, when interstate highway 45 was built through the middle of town. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 14 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 19 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 34 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.

More markers nearby

• Rice Cemetery — 3.7 mi
• Haynie Memorial Methodist Church — 3.9 mi
• Rice — 4.0 mi
• First Baptist Church of Rice — 4.1 mi