City of Alvord

Alvord's numbers tell its story. The Handbook of Texas puts the town at 1,376 residents in 1925, with a high school, an elementary school, four churches, a weekly newspaper and a Magnolia Petroleum Company pumping station, and the railroad still stopped there. The Depression then thinned the nearby watermelon farms and ranches. By 1940 there were 821 residents and thirty-five businesses, and by 1960 only 720 people and nineteen businesses. The post office dated from 1882, and the town was incorporated in 1890 as a prosperous retail center for farmers.

What the plaque says

City of Alvord By 1882, when the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad built a line to this area, a small agricultural community had developed here on an old Indian trail. First known as Nina, the town was renamed Alvord in 1883, probably in honor of J.B. Alvord, President of the railroad. Early businesses here included mercantile stores, a drugstore, a variety store, a bank, Hotels and a saloon with a second floor opera house. the first school was established at Briar Branch in 1890. Alvord has continued to develop as a center of farming, ranching and oil production. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wise County Courthouse — 11 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 25 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 28 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.

More markers nearby

• General Ernest O. Thompson — 0.3 mi
• Indian Captives Dot and Bianca Babb — 6.0 mi
• Brown Hotel — 7.3 mi
• Battle of the Knobs — 8.9 mi