Foard County

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the county's wild fruits and herbs drew Comanche (Numunuu) and Kiowa bands, who often wintered here following the buffalo, and Pedro Vial is thought to have passed through in 1786. In the 1870s hide hunters came in on the Buffalo Road from Henrietta and killed off the herds. Ranchers followed: in 1880 the Worsham and Stevens ranch of Clay County extended its range here and Dick Forsyth grazed his OX herd along the Pease. The Handbook of Texas says the county was first proposed as Beaver County.

What the plaque says

Formed from Hardeman, King, Cottle, and Knox counties; created March 3, 1891, organized April 27, 1891. Named in honor of Robert L. Foard 1831-1898. A Confederate officer prominent lawyer of Columbus, Texas. Crowell, the county seat traversed by a railroad inn 1908.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fire Hall Museum — 2.9 mi
  Crowell's local museum in the 1922 firehouse on Main Street, in a county-seat town that was almost wiped away by the tornado of April 1942 and rebuilt.
• Copper Breaks State Park — 6.8 mi
  Red badlands on the Pease River between Quanah and Crowell, streaked with the green copper that lured a Civil War general here to mine, with longhorns and a dark-sky designation.
• Quanah, Acme and Pacific Depot Museum — 19 mi
  The Spanish Colonial Revival depot of a little railroad that set out for El Paso and never got past Floydada, now Hardeman County's museum alongside the county's 1890 jail.
• Red River Valley Museum — 25 mi
  Vernon's museum on College Drive, with rooms on the Waggoner ranch empire, Doan's Crossing and early Vernon, and the largest known collection of Electra Waggoner Biggs's art.

More markers nearby

• First Christian Church — 2.8 mi
• Robert L. Foard — 3.0 mi
• First Officials of Foard County — 3.0 mi
• Site of the Town of Margaret — 6.6 mi