Dunn

Dunn sits on State Highway 208 ten miles south of Snyder, the Handbook of Texas says. It credits the founding to a man named Richardson and says Alonzo T. Dunn, the town's namesake, filed on land in the area in 1889. Freighters hauling supplies from the Texas and Pacific station at Colorado City north to Snyder and Lubbock watered here, and the Dunn home was a way station for mail and passenger hacks. A cotton gin opened in 1930. Dunn had a post office and seventy-five people in 1980 and 1990, and the same population in 2000.

What the plaque says

Started as change station for teams hauling goods north after T. & P. Railway reached Colorado City in 1881. Freighters camped here beside creek. A blacksmith shop and store were started to supply them. In time a town developed. Mail was dropped at home of Mr. and Mrs. A. T. Dunn. Post office, granted 1890, was given their name; Mr. Dunn was first postmaster. In 1890, the first school was built. A well, windmill and trough were added for travelers and town. Because it was in middle of the road, well was covered when highway was paved in 1938. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Scurry County Museum — 8.2 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
• Heart of West Texas Museum — 12 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• Lake Colorado City State Park — 17 mi
  A mesquite-plains park on a lake built in 1949 to cool a power plant, southwest of Colorado City, where controlled burns are bringing back the grassland and 300 bird species pass through.
• National WASP WWII Museum — 26 mi
  Hangar 1 at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, where the women of the WASP trained to fly every aircraft in the Army's arsenal in World War II, then waited thirty-three years to be called veterans.

More markers nearby

• Ira — 6.9 mi
• Home County of Famous Frontiersman J. Wright Mooar — 8.0 mi
• The Prairie Dog (Cynomys Ludovicianus) — 9.4 mi
• Site of Town of Cuthbert — 10 mi