Captain Gully Cowsert

Cowsert joined a force remade a few years earlier. In 1935 the legislature folded the Rangers into a new Department of Public Safety beside the Highway Patrol and a crime laboratory. Appointments now came by examination rather than patronage: applicants had to be between thirty and forty-five, at least 5 feet 8 inches tall and crack shots, and they trained in fingerprinting, communications and ballistics. Under director Homer Garrison, Jr., from 1938, the Rangers became the department's plainclothes detectives, a mostly rural constabulary of six companies that grew from forty-five men in 1941 to sixty-two in 1961.

What the plaque says

Captain Gully Cowsert (June 12,1896 - June 11,1958) Corporal, U.S. Marine Corps, World War I. Became Texas Ranger in 1942. He served in that rank for 14 years. Commanded Company E and West Texas District 14 years. Gained fame solving cattle and sheep theft cases. First wife was Mamie Keesee; had two sons, K. and Gully, Jr. and daughter, Mary Katherine. Second wife was Dana Van der Smissen. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kimble County Historical Museum — 12 mi
  A free county museum in Junction, the town at the meeting of the North and South Llano, with the papers, photographs and tools of a ranching county.
• Fort McKavett State Historic Site — 24 mi
  The post Sherman called the prettiest in Texas, home to soldiers of all four Buffalo Soldier regiments and then to a town that lived in its buildings until 1973.

More markers nearby

• Coalson-Pullen Colony — 3.0 mi
• Fort McKavett - Fort Clark Military Road — 4.5 mi
• Roosevelt — 4.7 mi
• Bear Creek Settlement — 8.8 mi