Gatesville

Early Gatesville sat far from supply. The Handbook of Texas says wagons had to bring goods from Houston, 200 miles away. By 1880 the town had 434 people and had become an important frontier supply station. In the early 1880s residents gave $30,000 and land to the Texas and St. Louis Railway to bring the line from Waco, finished in 1882. By 1884 there were steam grist and saw mills, cotton gins, three churches, two schools and two weekly newspapers. The railroad abandoned its track in 1972 and left Gatesville without rail service.

What the plaque says

Gatesville County seat of Coryell County, Gatesville began in 1854 after the county was created. Richared Grant, an Indian trader and local landowner, donated the townsite. It was named for Old Fort Gates (1849-1852), which had been established 5 miles east for Indian protection. The Fort, named for U.S. Army major G. R. Gates, was the first settlement in the county. For a few months Fort Gates served as county seat, but then Gatesville was chosen. The County's first mail line--from Gatesville to Belton--was set up in 1855. The town grew slowly at first, suffering from intermittent Indian raids, but the period from 1870 to 1882 saw great progress. In 1870 the town was incorporated and in 1872 a courthouse was built. When St. Louis & Southwestern railroad ran a spur line to Gatesville in 1882, the citizens held a gala welcoming celebration. With the railroad came prosperity and many new homes and businesses. A fine opera house, frontier symbol of culture, was erected and numerous civic improvements were initiated. Today the town is the home of the Gatesville and Mountain View State schools for boys. The economy of the area is based on ranching and agriculture. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 18 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Bosque Museum — 25 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Hamilton County Courthouse — 29 mi
  A limestone courthouse of 1886-87 on the Hamilton square, built after the county's 1878 courthouse burned, enlarged in the early 1930s and rededicated in 2012 after restoration.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 33 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

More markers nearby

• Coryell County Courthouse — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Gatesville — steps away
• Lincolnville Community — 2.0 mi
• Fort Gates — 3.7 mi