Bethel Strawn

Strawn's name sits on a rock layer, but the town's money came out of the ground in other ways. The first oil in Palo Pinto County turned up near Strawn in 1895, though nothing followed until 1915, when the Strawn Coal Mining Company and the Texas and Pacific Coal and Oil Company took an interest and twenty wells were producing before the year ended. The field is three pools, six miles long and two wide. The Strawn Oil Company drilled its first gas well in 1924. Strawn incorporated in 1940 with 1,107 people, a bank and a post office.

What the plaque says

Bethel Strawn An 1858 settler and leading citizen of Palo Pinto County. Enlisted 1864 in Co. B. 1st Frontier District, Texas State Troops, in Maj. Wm. Quayle's command. Saw service mainly in keeping down Indian depredations and protecting settlements that were furnishing food, salt, hides, leather and other goods to aid the Confederate cause during the Civil War. In 1880, when Texas and Pacific Railroad built through western Palo Pinto County, a stop was named for Bethel Strawn, who owned land at that point. By 1885, Strawn settlement had grown into a town drawing off people from old Palo Pinto. During 20th century oil developments, the name Strawn is used for petroleum bearing formations of rock that underlie this county and other areas. Strawn minerals include coal, once mined locally. 36 Texas counties were named for men prominent in the Confederacy during the Civil War. One county, Val Verde, was named for a Civil War battlefield on which Texas troops were victorious during the New Mexico-Arizona campaign of 1861-1862. 41 Texas towns were named for men who figured in the Civil War. Strawn, however, is the one geological name commemorating a Texan in the Civil War. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 21 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 32 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.

More markers nearby

• James Nesbit Stuart House — 0.3 mi
• Mount Marion Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• Mary Jane Gentry — 0.8 mi
• Mingus Baptist Church — 4.3 mi