Bosque County

What the plaque leaves out is how the county voted and what came after. On February 23, 1861, Bosque County voted for secession, 233 to 81, according to the Handbook of Texas. The county's Black population grew from 293 in 1860 to 528 in 1870. The Handbook says the lawlessness of those years included the killing of freedmen, and that an Austin newspaper reported in early 1870 that the county averaged two killings a week. It names none of the dead. White residents blamed the Republican government for the violence.

What the plaque says

Bosque County Named for the Bosque (Spanish for "woods") River. The territory now part of this county was traversed in 1841 by the Texan-Santa Fe Expedition. Maj. George B. Erath, noted surveyor and soldier, explored the region prior to its settlement. The first colonists established homes in 1850-51. Among the national groups who immigrated here were the English (at Kent), Norwegians (at Norse and elsewhere), and the Germans (in eastern part of county). Formally created and organized in 1854, Bosque county has traditionally had farming-ranching economy. The Chisholm cattle trail crossed the area in the 1870s. Erected by the State of Texas - 1973

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Meridian State Park — 2.6 mi
  A 505-acre park in Bosque County where World War I veterans of a Civilian Conservation Corps company dammed Bee Creek in 1933-34 for a 72-acre lake and cut stone buildings around it.
• Bosque Museum — 11 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Cleburne State Park — 24 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.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 24 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.

More markers nearby

• General Alison Nelson — 0.6 mi
• Boyhood Home of John A. Lomax — 2.3 mi
• Site of Clifton Mill — 9.8 mi
• Clifton Lutheran College — 11 mi