Bruce-Davis House

Cresson sits on the Hood County line, and the Handbook of Texas traces its name to John Cresson, a wagon-train captain who camped here before the Civil War. Stagecoaches ran from Jacksboro and Weatherford to Cresson as early as 1856, and onward to Cleburne, Waco, Granbury and Stephenville. In 1887 the Fort Worth and Rio Grande and the Santa Fe both reached town and crossed here, and a post office opened. By 1890 Cresson had thirty-five people; by 1905 it had two banks, eight general stores and two doctors.

What the plaque says

Bruce-Davis House Alabama-born Madison Jones, who donated land in Cresson for a school and a Methodist church, had this neighborhood platted in 1889. He sold this lot to Richard Bruce (1849-1895), a stock raiser from a pioneer Johnson County family. Bruce built this modest frame house and embellished the structure with decorative porch trim. The interior has beaded walls and ceilings. After Bruce's death, his widow Mary (Wood) (1852-1924) married James F. Davis (1846-1928). They continued to occupy the residence, which has been enlarged three times. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Acton State Historic Site — 7.3 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 12 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Chandor Gardens — 19 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• Cleburne State Park — 19 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.

More markers nearby

• Dennis Methodist Church — 3.0 mi
• Acton Public Square — 7.2 mi
• Acton Methodist Church — 7.2 mi
• First Baptist Church of Godley — 7.6 mi