Hayrick

Hayrick took its name from a nearby mountain shaped like a hay mound, the Handbook of Texas says, and had twenty-five people and a post office in 1887. The county's first newspaper, the Hayrick Democrat, began here in 1889 and was soon renamed the Rustler. Most settlers in the south of the county had opposed Hayrick as county seat, and two of its courthouses burned, possibly by arson, before Robert Lee won the 1891 election by forty-eight votes out of nearly 400. Hayrick's people then moved to the new seat.

What the plaque says

First county seat of Coke County, 1889-1890. Robert Lee then became the county seat.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Chadbourne — 10 mi
  An 1852 infantry post and Butterfield stage station on a Coke County ranch, its fallen stone buildings rebuilt since 1999 by the descendant of the family that has ranched the land since 1877.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 25 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.
• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 30 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.

More markers nearby

• Coke County — 4.7 mi
• Locklin Bartholomew Murray — 6.1 mi
• Robert Lee Cemetery — 6.1 mi
• Fence-Cutting War — 6.8 mi