Gainesville

Gainesville began in the Peters colony years. The Handbook of Texas says Mary E. Clark gave 40 acres in 1850, and Colonel William Fitzhugh, who commanded a stockade 3.5 miles southeast, proposed naming the town for his old commander, General Edmund Gaines. Settlers had wanted to call it Liberty, but the state rejected that name. The first post office opened in 1851, the town incorporated on February 17, 1873, and the cattle trade made it a supply stop for cowboys heading to Kansas. The Denison and Pacific railroad reached it in 1879.

What the plaque says

Gainesville Founded 1850. Named for Gen. Edmund P. Gaines, who in 1836 aided Republic of Texas. Military supply headquarters during Civil War. Important in defense against Indian attacks and invasion. Center for agriculture, industry, oil. Home of famed Gainesville Community Circus. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 6.1 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 17 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Eisenhower State Park — 27 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.

More markers nearby

• The Cross Timbers — steps away
• Callisburg United Methodist Church — 3.6 mi
• Gainesville State School — 3.6 mi
• First Oil Well in Cooke County — 3.7 mi