Burkett Pecan Tree

The tree began with a squirrel's nest. In the fall of 1900 J. H. Burkett's young sons, Omar and Joe, found pecans in one, and their father sent them back to find the tree that bore them. They found it on the south bank of Battle Fish Creek, and Burkett grafted its bud-wood onto a second-growth seedling. Only two buds took, and they bore their first nuts in 1905. One bud died in 1908, and the parent tree was gone by 1910. In the 1920s and 1930s the thin-shelled Burkett was the most popular pecan variety.

What the plaque says

Bred from a native tree, 1900, by J. H. Burkett (1861-1945), Texas pecan industry leader. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 10 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.
• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 20 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.
• Old Jail Art Center — 25 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.

More markers nearby

• Hittson Ranch Headquarters on Battle Creek — 1.3 mi
• Site of Scranton Academy — 5.7 mi
• Callahan City Cemetery — 8.4 mi
• Callahan City — 8.4 mi