Battle Branch

The commander who brought the feud to terms was Maj. John B. Jones of the Frontier Battalion, the ranger force the legislature created in January 1874. Born in South Carolina in 1834 and raised in Texas, Jones had served as a Confederate staff officer. Governor Richard Coke gave him the battalion that May. In the first six months his rangers reported more than forty raiding parties on the frontier and fought fourteen, and on July 12, 1874, Jones led a small force against more than 125 Comanche, Kiowa and Apache warriors at Lost Valley in Young County.

What the plaque says

Battle Branch This branch of Sulphur Creek was named for an event in the Horrell-Higgins Feud. On the morning of March 26, 1877, Tom and Mart Horrell were going to Lampasas to attend district court. En route, they were ambushed by gunmen hiding in the brush near this location. The Horrells returned fire and the attackers rode away. Mart took his wounded brother to a nearby residence and continued to town for help. He led a squad of Texas Rangers to the site, but officers never caught the attackers. Many believed a Higgins faction had set up the ambush. The feud would continue, with additional gunfighting, for several more months. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — 5.1 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 23 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Inks Lake State Park — 27 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 28 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• Hughes' Springs — 3.6 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Lampasas — 4.3 mi
• Cook Cemetery — 4.7 mi
• Lampasas County — 4.9 mi