Comanche Peak

The mesa gave its name to rock as well as to a power plant. Geologists call a chalky Lower Cretaceous limestone the Comanche Peak, after this hill, its type locality. The USGS places it in the middle Albian stage. One fossil site credits Shumard with the name Comanche Peak group in 1860 for a unit best developed in the Brazos and Trinity valleys. The Handbook of Texas calls the peak the highest point in Hood County and says Comanches used it as a meeting place.

What the plaque says

Comanche Peak Known as a prominent Native American and pioneer landmark, Comanche Peak is actually a mesa. The peak rises 1,229 feet above sea level. The peak may have had ceremonial value for local tribes or have been a lookout point for game and enemies. A Comanche trail crossed Hood County in this vicinity. In 1846, pioneers and Native Americans en route to the so-called "peak" for a meeting almost failed to find it because of its flat top. Later settlers held dances here and students from Add-Ran College had picnics at the peak. Boys also hunted wolves and rattlesnakes among caves and rocks on the top. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Granbury Courthouse Square — 4.0 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Acton State Historic Site — 7.0 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 9.8 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.
• Cleburne State Park — 17 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.

More markers nearby

• Hood County News — 3.0 mi
• First Christian Church of Granbury — 3.8 mi
• Nellie Gray Robertson — 3.9 mi
• County Named for Famous Confederate General John Bell Hood — 3.9 mi