Clinton

Clinton was a contest before it was a town. Cameron, across the Guadalupe, traded the county seat with it until an August 1850 election settled the matter. Court met in a log house, then a log courthouse of 1852 costing $400, a frame building of 1855 and a two-story courthouse of 1858, insured for $8,000, which went to Cuero in 1876. On June 20, 1874, Kute Tuggle, Jim White and R. P. Scrap Taylor were lynched here by men of the Sutton side. The railroad had already drawn merchants across the river.

What the plaque says

Clinton Created in 1846, De Witt County was named for Empresario Green De Witt. The county seat, originally at Cameron, was moved in 1848 to the pioneer town of Clinton, named for De Witt's son. County government returned briefly to Cameron, but Clinton again served as the county seat from 1850 until 1876, when Cuero was named the seat of government. Courthouse here included a log cabin and two frame buildings. A cemetery and well remain at the site of Clinton, evidence of the once-thriving community that was the home of many prominent area pioneers. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 3.3 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• De León Plaza — 26 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 27 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.

More markers nearby

• Hopkinsville Community, A Colony of Freedmen — 2.0 mi
• Eugene A. Daule — 2.8 mi
• Buchel Bank — 3.1 mi
• Morgan Steamship Line — 3.2 mi