Gainesville Junior College

The college's most unexpected benefactor was an English teacher. The Handbook of Texas says Mary Josephine Cox, who taught English at the college, left her whole estate in 1934 to help county young people attend it, and oil was found on the property in 1945. Under H. O. McCain, president from 1928 to 1945, enrollment passed 100 in the 1930s and peaked at 190 in 1939-40. The college took the name Cooke County Junior College in 1961, dropped Junior in 1974 and became North Central Texas College in 1994.

What the plaque says

Gainesville Junior College With support from the Kiwanis Club and the Parent-Teacher Association, Randolph Lee Clark (1871-1941) began promoting the idea of a junior college upon his arrival in 1923 as superintendent of Gainesville's public schools. In May 1924, the city council authorized the creation of a college as part of the school system. The two-year institution opened the following September in the Newsome Dougherty Memorial High School Building. Initial enrollment at Gainesville Junior College was 32, with ten students in the first graduating class of 1926. World War II stimulated the development of an aeronautics program, and returning veterans took advantage of the college's first night classes. The curriculum initially consisted of academic courses that would transfer to four-year universities. Eventually, vocational and agricultural training programs, a division of continuing education, and cultural enrichment courses were added to expand the college's offerings. In 1960, Cooke County voters approved the separation of the college from the independent school district. In the ensuing decade, enrollment surpassed 1,000, and the campus of Cooke County Junior College (as it then was known) grew from one to eight buildings. Known as North Central Texas College since 1994 to reflect the school's presence beyond the boundaries of Cooke County, this institution is significant as the oldest, continuously operating, public two-year college in Texas. In 2000, it opened new campuses in the cities of Corinth and Bowie. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 1.6 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.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 21 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• Hubert H. Moss — steps away
• Clark, Randolph Lee (1871-1941) — steps away
• Moffett Park — 0.8 mi
• Cooke County, C.S.A./2nd Frontier Regiment — 0.8 mi