Beasley

Cecil A. Beasley was a Richmond banker, and he dropped the name Dyer when it turned out another Texas community already had it. The Stern and Stern promotion made the town a supply and shipping point for prairie settlers, and by 1914 it counted 325 people, a bank, a lumber company and telephone service. A filling station and a movie house followed in the 1920s. In 1930 its schools taught 252 White and thirty-two Black pupils, and they merged with Lamar in 1948. The population, 175 in 1960, reached 590 by 2000.

What the plaque says

Beasley Founded 1894 by Cecil A. Beasley (1862 - 1908), on the Texas & New Orleans Railroad. First called "Dyer" for Isabel Dyer (1871 - 1933), whom Beasley later married. Post office opened as "Beasley," May 13, 1898. The town boomed in 1910, as Stern & Stern Land Co. of Kansas City promoted land sales through a town lot auction. Many new settlers were German and Czech families from Washington County. Soon Beasley had 3 general stores, 2 cotton gins, a 3-story hotel, an ice-house, a public school, and 7 churches. Beasley was incorporated in 1970 and continues to serve as a marketing center for the area. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 21 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 29 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.

More markers nearby

• Kendleton — 5.9 mi
• Terry v. Adams — 6.2 mi
• Powell Point School — 6.3 mi
• Macario Garcia — 6.4 mi