Captain John Holliday

Holliday reached Texas before December 1835, when he joined B. L. Lawrence's Tennessee Volunteers at Nacogdoches. With Burr H. Duval's Kentucky Volunteers they formed the Kentucky Mustangs under James W. Fannin at Goliad, and Holliday escaped the massacre by swimming the river and hiding until the Mexican troops had gone. He was a first lieutenant in the Second Infantry by February 1837 and a captain that March. On the Santa Fe expedition the Texans mistook the Wichita River for the Red and followed its valley from August 5 to 17, 1841, until their guide deserted.

What the plaque says

(Dec. 8, 1811 - Aug. 19, 1842) Born Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania; came to Texas about 1835, joined Texian Army, and was one of 24 survivors of the Goliad Massacre, March 27, 1836. Joined Texian-Santa Fe Expedition, and en route to New Mexico, Aug. 4, 1841, carved his name on a tree in this vicinity. After reaching Santa Fe, the party was arrested and marched to Perote Prison near Mexico City. In Aug. 1842, Holliday was released, but he died of yellow fever aboard ship two days from Galveston, and was buried at sea. Nearby Holliday Creek and the town of Holliday were named for the carving on the tree. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 11 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 12 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Royal Theater — 17 mi
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 17 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.

More markers nearby

• Maggie and Herod "Pap" Simpson — 1.7 mi
• First Methodist Church of Holliday — 1.8 mi
• Van Dorn Trail — 5.9 mi
• Dad's Corner — 6.0 mi