Donahoe Community

The Handbook of Texas says the community took its name from Donahoe Creek, which was named for a merchant who explored the area with the Texan Santa Fe expedition of 1841. The 1860 census listed Howel Bass as blacksmith, and a post office ran from 1888 to 1903. In 1896 the town had a general store, the Science Hill School, a smithy and about sixty people. A neighboring community, Dice, named presumably for store owner John Dice, had a church and school in 1948. Most of the old townsite is private land, and the marker stands by the road.

What the plaque says

Donahoe Community Colonists settled in the late 1840s along the fertile Donahoe Creek. Samuel Gibbs Leatherman (1799-1888) arrived in 1854 and opened the first mercantile store. He gave land for the cemetery and brought in the first doctor. In 1880 Leatherman donated land for the schoolhouse. It also served as a church until 1911 when Thomas Jefferson Jones and his wife gave this site for the Baptist church. Donahoe boasted a town square, post office, telephone system and voting precinct. With the coming of good roads to other towns, Donahoe declined, leaving only the cemetery. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 19 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 21 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 24 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 26 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.

More markers nearby

• Davilla Baptist Church — 4.1 mi
• Site of Booker T. Washington School — 5.7 mi
• First National Bank of Bartlett — 5.8 mi
• First Baptist Church of Bartlett — 6.0 mi