Historical Marker

Emerald Townsite

Ozona, Crockett County · Texas
Erected 1978

The Handbook of Texas says a well-driller tapped the aquifer 540 feet down in 1888, and that the railroad's immigration commissioner persuaded the company to equip the well with a windmill, a pump and a tank and to add a two-room schoolhouse and a store. The townsite, a mile square with 300 lots, was first named Emerald Grove. Prospects came by train to San Angelo and by buggy from there to see dollar-an-acre land. In the fall of 1897 the last Emerald building, the school, was hauled to Ozona on four wagons.

What the plaque says

The first platted town in Crockett County, Emerald was founded in 1889 by Fort Worth & Rio Grande Railway Immigration Agent T. W. Wilkinson. It was to be an agricultural shipping point on a planned extension of the F.W. & R.G. Publicized from Maine to Minnesota for mild climate and fertile land, it acquired a post office on April 8, 1890. Mail came from San Angelo via Knickerbocker (50 miles northeast). Charles Hatch and E. C. Moore were successive postmasters. In August 1890 the town was in the path of a prairie fire. Although valiant work turned the fire, it was visible for two nights before and two nights after it circled the town. Also in 1890, the county's first school session was held in a tent in Emerald by Mrs. John Noyes. After a frame schoolhouse was built, Mrs. John Ketchpaw taught there. Miss Ada Williams taught the last school term in the spring of 1893. Confident it would be the county seat, Emerald nevertheless lost in the election of 1891 to the E. M. Powell water well site (now Ozona). Wilkinson protested, to no avail. After the residents began to move to the Powell Well, Emerald Post Office closed on December 7, 1891. The townsite thus became one of the many colonization failures in West Texas. (1978)

Where it stands

30.69926, -101.09148 · Directions

Worth the stop nearby

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