Gilmer

The Yamboree has a traceable start. A 1946 county history credits J. A. Brogoitti, acting manager of the Gilmer Chamber of Commerce, and vocational teacher J. L. Sowell, helped by county agent W. D. Seals and home demonstration agent Lorene Stephens. They called it the East Texas Yamboree so it would speak for the whole region. The Handbook of Texas says residents launched it after the late-1920s sweet potato weevil quarantine lifted, with the first festival in October 1935. The war stopped it in 1941, and a Victory Yamboree was planned for 1946.

What the plaque says

Gilmer Founded 1846. Named for Thomas W. Gilmer, U. S. Secretary of the Navy and ardent champion of annexation for Texas. Supply, training, production and educational center during the Civil War. Farming, lumbering and oil hub. Home of famous Annual Yamboree, Sweet Potato Festival. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 23 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Tyler State Park — 25 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.
• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 26 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.
• Daingerfield State Park — 26 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.

More markers nearby

• Dickson Orphanage — 0.8 mi
• Site of an Indian Village — 1.5 mi
• Croley Funeral Home — 1.6 mi
• The Gilmer Mirror — 1.7 mi