George B. McClellan

The lake that carries McClellan's name lies in land the federal government bought back from the Dust Bowl. In the 1930s the Department of the Interior purchased the tract under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act to return badly eroded farmland to grass, and the 1,449-acre McClellan Creek National Grassland is now run by the Forest Service from Albuquerque. In the late 1940s the Panhandle Water Conservation Authority dammed the creek's main branch for soil conservation, flood control and recreation, holding 5,005 acre-feet. Deer, coyotes, quail and turkeys live among its grasses, marshes and woods.

What the plaque says

George B. McClellan West Point graduate George B. McClellan (1826-1885) was a U.S. Army engineer and a member of an expedition led by Randolph B. Marcy that explored the Texas Panhandle in 1852. McClellan Creek was named for him, and nearly a century later Lake McClellan was named in his honor. He was vice president and chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad and served as a Union general during the Civil War. He designed the McClellan saddle used by the U.S. Army. He ran for president in 1864 against Abraham Lincoln and served as governor of New Jersey from 1878-1881. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Phillips 66 Station, McLean — 15 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.
• Devil's Rope and Old Route 66 Museum — 16 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.
• Donley County Courthouse — 19 mi
  Bulger and Rapp's red brick and white stone courthouse of 1891, the oldest in use in the Panhandle, given back its third floor and towers in a 2003 restoration.
• Saints' Roost Museum — 20 mi
  Clarendon's county museum in the hospital Cornelia Adair built for JA cowboys in 1910, named for the nickname cowhands gave a Methodist town with no saloons.

More markers nearby

• Indian Battlefield — 0.3 mi
• Eldridge Post Office — 7.9 mi
• Dr. Charles L. Fields — 13 mi
• Groom — 13 mi