Alvarado

The Handbook of Texas credits the name to the town's first sheriff, A. H. Onstott, who fought in the Mexican War at Alvaredo in Veracruz. By the summer of 1854 about a hundred families lived here and mail was arriving, and the town counted four churches, more than a dozen businesses and 350 residents. Alvarado voted to incorporate in 1878. Unlike many neighbors, it kept growing through the Depression and the war years, reaching 1,324 people by 1943, with later growth tied to Cleburne and the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

What the plaque says

Alvarado Early settler David Mitchell established a trading post near here in the late 1840s, about the time colonists of W. S. Peters' empresario grant began to settle the area. Colonist William Balch, who settled on an area land grant in 1852, was later to become known as the "Father of Alvarado" for his efforts in having the townsite surveyed in 1854, establishing the first general merchandise stores on the square, and for donating land for a cemetery, school, and union church. The town, named for Alvarado, Mexico, soon boasted a post office, homes, businesses, and churches. A community school established about 1855 became The Alvarado Masonic Institute in 1875. Rail lines extended through Alvarado by the Missouri Pacific Railroad in 1881 and by the Chicago, Texas, and Mexican Central Railroad in 1884 spurred a local economic boom. By 1885 Alvarado had several churches, two schools, two gins, an opera house, a bank, a newspaper, and a population of about 2,000. The Masonic Institute became the Alvarado Normal Institute in 1899 and Alvarado High School in 1908-09. A large jail/town hall erected at this site in the mid-1880s was removed in the 1920s and replaced with a garden arrangement; a gazebo was added later. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 21 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 — 21 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.
• Cleburne State Park — 22 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 25 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• Outlaws Benjamin Bickerstaff and Josiah Thompson — steps away
• Balch-Senterwood Cemetery — 0.4 mi
• Site of Norman Springs & Norman Grove — 1.2 mi
• Site of Ezell-McLeroy Cotton Gin — 2.2 mi