Cooke County

Cooke County once reached far past today's lines: the original county took in land that became Montague, Clay, Wise and Jack counties, and it settled into its present shape in 1857. The Handbook of Texas says the earliest settlers brought enslaved people, 369 of them by 1860, about 11 percent of the population. Farming dominated afterward. In 1900 the county had 3,307 farms, and sharecroppers worked 42 percent of them. After the cotton collapse of the 1920s the number of owner-farmers fell from 1,299 to 720 in ten years.

What the plaque says

Cooke County Created March 20, 1848. Organized March 10, 1849. Named in honor of William G. Cooke 1808-1847. Captain of the "New Orleans Greys," 1835; Assistant Inspector General at San Jacinto, 1836; member of the Santa Fe Expedition, 1841; Secretary of War and Marine, 1845; Adjutant General, 1846-1847; County Seat, Gainesville. 1964

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 0.9 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.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 22 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.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 24 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

• Cooke County, C.S.A./2nd Frontier Regiment — steps away
• Moffett Park — steps away
• American Paint Horse Association — steps away
• Gainesville Community Circus — steps away