City of Bowie

The town's namesake was born in Kentucky, probably on April 10, 1796, and grew up in Louisiana, the Handbook of Texas says. After the War of 1812 he and his brother Rezin bought enslaved people from the pirate Jean Laffite and sold them in St. Landry Parish, quitting the trade at $65,000. At the Sandbar Fight near Natchez on September 19, 1827, he drove a large butcher knife into Norris Wright's breast, and men began asking cutlers for a knife like Bowie's. He left Thibodaux for Texas on January 1, 1830, and died at the Alamo.

What the plaque says

City of Bowie The history of the City of Bowie has been molded by forward-thinking pioneers of business, education and industry in the late nineteenth century. Situated along many significant trade and travel routes that traversed the State of Texas, permanent settlements in this area began in the 1850s in an area known as Queen's Peak, four miles north of Bowie. The City of Bowie was established when the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad purchased acreage here in the 1870s from Mrs. A. Lavonia (Stallings) Lindsay, J.I.G. Cowan, James W. Stallings and J.G. Cummins which became the downtown site of Bowie. As the workers laid the tracks from Decatur to Bowie, tents were erected to live alongside the tracks, which led to the name "Tent City." Once the railroad was completed, permanent houses and buildings were constructed. The courageous, hardy and resourceful settlers decided to name the town Bowie after Texas hero James Bowie, a name synonymous with courage, strength and faith. The town incorporated in 1883 and became a market and financial center for farmers and ranchers between Fort Worth and Wichita Falls. Churches, schools and fraternal organizations were established for the citizens and their children. During the Great Depression, the Public Works Administration constructed rock walls and buildings in Elmwood Cemetery and Pelham Park. By the mid-twentieth century, Bowie was the largest city in Montague County. From its humble beginnings as a railroad and farming community, Bowie has grown into a diverse city that embraces its strong heritage. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 21 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.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 27 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 29 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

• First National Bank of Bowie — steps away
• M. Johnson Poultry Ranch — 0.6 mi
• Montague County — 0.6 mi
• Montague Cemetery — 11 mi