Frank Willis, Sr.

Willis came to the law the long way. He grew up on an Indiana farm admiring Lew Wallace and Senator Daniel W. Voorhees, learned photography, taught school and read law, then practiced in Kansas, where he was a district attorney and ran a drugstore. On the Panhandle bench he sided with cattlemen who used state lands without paying, and the attorney general sought to impeach him. At the 1887 trial in Austin he reportedly won acquittal with a speech in his own defense that nobody recorded verbatim. He later became the Santa Fe's general attorney at Canadian.

What the plaque says

Frank Willis, Sr. (January 23, 1842 - August 5, 1894) First judge of the 35th District, then comprising entire Panhandle. Born in Indiana, he came to Texas in search of new horizons. As judge, from 1881 to 1890, his honesty, keen wit, and ample figure inspired many anecdotes. His two sons, Newton and Frank, Jr., also became judges. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Mobeetie Jail Museum — 0.7 mi
  The 1886 stone jail of the Panhandle's first county seat, the buffalo hunters' Hidetown on Sweetwater Creek that ran the courts for fifteen counties before losing its fort, railroad hopes and county seat.
• Roberts County Museum — 17 mi
  The county museum in Miami's old Santa Fe depot, holding mammoth bones and Clovis points from a 1934 dig, in the cow town that has held a cow-calling contest since 1949.
• Devil's Rope and Old Route 66 Museum — 21 mi
  Barbed wire and the Texas road in McLean's old brassiere factory: the fence that closed the open range, from the salesmen who sold it to the Panhandle ranches it divided.
• Phillips 66 Station, McLean — 21 mi
  A 1929 cottage-style Phillips 66 station on First Street in McLean, the town I-40 went around last and whose Route 66 business district stayed much as it was.

More markers nearby

• Temple Lea Houston — steps away
• Captain G. W. Arrington — steps away
• Fort Elliott Flagpole — steps away
• Emanuel Dubbs — steps away