Captain J. J. Cureton, C.S.A.

The Handbook of Texas tells the December 1860 fight in two entries. Its Cureton entry says he was among a group of citizen soldiers who met and killed Chief Peta Nocona that month. Its Cynthia Ann Parker entry describes a December 18 attack by Texas Rangers under Lawrence Sullivan Ross on a Comanche hunting camp at Mule Creek, a Pease River tributary, where a blue-eyed woman was captured. The plaque says Cureton helped rescue her. She had lived as Comanche for nearly twenty-five years and tried several times to flee back to her Comanche family.

What the plaque says

Captain J. J. Cureton, C.S.A. (1826-1881) Indian fighter, lawman and rancher. Settled on the Palo Pinto County frontier, 1854. Led neighbors in defending homes during Indian raids. In 1860 helped rescue Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been taken 24 years before by Comanches. Captain in frontier troops during Civil War, defending northwest Texas from Indians and northern invasion. Camp Cureton, Archer County C.S.A. outpost, was named for him. Sheriff of Bosque County, 1876-80. Grave is on Flat Top Ranch, near here. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Meridian State Park — 12 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.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 14 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.
• Cleburne State Park — 18 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.
• Bosque Museum — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• James Buckner "Buck" Barry, C.S.A. — steps away
• Boyhood Home of John A. Lomax — 8.7 mi
• Riverside Cemetery — 8.7 mi
• Chalk Mountain Cemetery — 11 mi