Early Sulphur Bluff

The bluff was the scene of the county's first election, held in 1846, the Handbook of Texas says. Robert Hargrave became postmaster on May 12, 1849, and in 1850 moved his mill, shop and post office three miles to the present site, abandoning the original place. By 1885 the town had a steam gristmill, three cotton gins, three churches and a school. It has a Black history too: a section called Lehigh, and Adonia Baptist Church, founded in 1874 and discontinued in 1958, according to a county genealogy site.

What the plaque says

Early Sulphur Bluff First known settlers in area were family of John Gregg. Their cemetery (2 mi. N) has marker dated 1837, from Republic of Texas era. Other early settlers were the brothers Hezekiah and Robert Hargrave, from Indiana. They built brush-roofed log homes (3 mi. N), on high bluff above Sulphur River, offering protection from Indians and providing abundant game. Robert Hargrave, a mechanical genius, built a wood and iron shop, a blacksmith shop, and a grist mill that drew customers from Caddo Mills, 50 miles away. A post office was built 1849; early school was founded 1852. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 15 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.
• Eiffel Tower — 22 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 23 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 24 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.

More markers nearby

• Wilson, John William — 12 mi
• Rockford Church and Cemetery — 12 mi
• North Liberty Baptist Church — 12 mi
• DeSpain Bridge — 12 mi