Arden Community

The Handbook of Texas says Arden took its name from John and Katie Arden, who had settled a claim on Rocky Creek by 1885. The community got a post office in 1890 with W. P. Moore as postmaster and a public school in 1892. In 1915 it had a post office, a school, a church and fourteen people. When its school was consolidated with Mertzon's in 1947, Arden had one business and thirty residents. The Handbook counts one resident in 2000, and an Arden reunion has been held each Labor Day on Rocky Creek since 1952.

What the plaque says

This ranching community was named for John Arden, a sheep raiser who arrived in 1876. After 1900, small homesteaders moved into the area. Joe Funk gave land for a school and cemetery in 1903. Baptist, Church of Christ, and Methodist congregations shared the schoolhouse for worship. Camp meetings were held at "The Grove" on Rocky Creek. In 1916 the school moved to a brick building at this site. Following a series of droughts, Arden began to decline. The post office closed in 1942 and the school in 1947. A frame polling station replaced the brick schoolhouse here. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Angelo State Park — 15 mi
  A 7,677-acre park around O.C. Fisher Reservoir on the edge of San Angelo, where four Texas landscapes meet and the state's official longhorn herd grazes beside a bison paddock.
• Concho River Walk — 19 mi
  Four miles of lit trails along the North Concho through downtown San Angelo, rebuilt after voters taxed themselves in 2004, with gardens, sculpture, a river stage and stocked trout.
• Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum — 20 mi
  The upstairs rooms on Concho Avenue where a brothel ran from 1902 until the Texas Rangers closed it in 1952, shown on short guided tours with most of the furnishings original.
• San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts — 20 mi
  A free art museum on the Concho beside Fort Concho, founded in the fort's 1868 quartermaster building and known nationally for its biennial ceramics competition.

More markers nearby

• Irion County — 11 mi
• Sherwood Courthouse — 11 mi
• Dove Creek Battle — 13 mi
• Anti-Tuberculosis Colony No. 1 (McKnight State Tuberculosis Hospital) — 13 mi