City of Pilot Point

The point was a grove of oaks with one tall cottonwood at its center, a landmark for Indians, Rangers and travelers, and Dripping Springs just north supplied water. The Handbook of Texas records a darker year: on July 8, 1860, a fire in town did $10,000 in damage and was blamed on a Black uprising, one of ten Texas communities where fires were blamed that way. Later a vigilante group, the Regulators, hanged six accused cattle thieves in a single day from an oak east of town. Pilot Point incorporated in 1866 and hired nine policemen to keep order.

What the plaque says

City of Pilot Point Attracted by fertile land and abundant water and game, pioneers began to settle at this site near the edge of the Cross Timbers region in the late 1840s. The village, first known as Pilot's Point, was named for a high point of timber that served travelers as a landmark. Near an early immigrant trail, Pilot Point was also a stop on the Butterfield State Route. A townsite was platted in 1854 on land originally granted to Charles Smith. Dr. R. W. Edleman (1825-1904) of Missouri came here to launch a medical practice and open a drugstore. James D. Walcott ran the earliest general store and became the first postmaster in 1855. Alphius Knight, a settler from New York, built and conducted the first school in the town. Established by three local residents in 1872, Pilot Point Seminary was later renamed Franklin College and operated here for almost 30 years. In 1878 the town's first newspaper was published and in 1884 a bank opened. A marketing center for farmers and stock raisers, Pilot Point had a grist mill and a cotton gin. The arrival of two railroads, the Texas and Pacific and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, boosted the local economy in the 1880s. Agriculture and light industry form the base of the town's economy in the 1970s. (1978) Incise on back: Marker sponsored by Chamber of Commerce Researched by: Mavis Burton, Norma Cole, Clifton Irick, Judy Lewellen, Estelle Whitley

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 16 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.
• Great Hanging Memorial — 19 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 26 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 27 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Primitive Baptist Church of Tioga — 5.5 mi
• Tioga United Methodist Church — 5.6 mi
• Mountain Springs School — 7.7 mi
• Old Celina Cemetery — 11 mi