Carson County

Samuel Price Carson nearly led the republic he helped found. A North Carolina planter and four-term congressman who was a close friend of David Crockett, he lost his seat in 1833 for supporting John C. Calhoun's nullification stand and moved west for his health. Elected a delegate from Pecan Point, he reached Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 10, 1836, and signed the Declaration of Independence at once. On March 17 he lost the vote for president ad interim to David G. Burnet, 29 to 23, and became secretary of state instead. He died at Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1838.

What the plaque says

Carson County Formed from Young and Bexar territories; created August 21, 1876, organized June 29, 1888. Named in honor of Samuel P. Carson 1798-1840, statesman of the United States and the Republic of Texas. Wheat, oil and gas contribute to its wealth. Panhandle, county seat. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson County Square House Museum — steps away
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• Gem Theatre — 16 mi
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• Hutchinson County Museum — 23 mi
  Borger's museum on the three-mile Main Street of a 1926 oil boom town that drew 45,000 people in ninety days and was put under martial law in 1929.
• Lake Meredith National Recreation Area — 24 mi
  A Canadian River reservoir in 200-foot breaks, built to water the Panhandle's cities, that fell to a record 26 feet deep in 2013 and still rises and falls with the drought.

More markers nearby

• Callaghan Memorial Library — steps away
• Carson County — steps away
• Panhandle Herald — steps away
• Conway Community Church — steps away