Callahan County

A low range of hills, the Callahan Divide, crosses the county east to west, splitting it between the Brazos and Colorado basins. Until the 1870s this was Comanche (Numunuu) country. Dr. Henry C. Connelly of the Chihuahua expedition first described it in 1839-40. The first White resident was probably James Dulan of Georgia, who built a shelter on Hubbard Creek in 1859. The Hart family made the first permanent home, on the South Prong of Pecan Bayou in 1868, and their 1872 double log cabin long stood as a landmark.

What the plaque says

Formed from Bexar Territory, created February 1, 1858; recreated August 21, 1876; organized July 3, 1877. Named in Honor of James H. Callahan, 1812-1856 soldier in the Texas Revolution, captain of the Texas Rangers. County Seat, Callahan City, 1877; Belle Plain, 1877-1883; Baird, since two early military roads, the Chisholm Trail, and the first government telegraph line traversed this region.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 20 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Old Jail Art Center — 23 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.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 24 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 24 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.

More markers nearby

• Camp Pecan, C.S.A. — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church of Baird — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Baird — steps away
• Captain Andrew Jackson Berry — 1.1 mi