Hittson Ranch Headquarters on Battle Creek

John Hittson's reach went far beyond this creek. He was Palo Pinto County's first sheriff, then spent most of the Civil War at abandoned Camp Cooper, branding ownerless cattle and selling them in Mexico; by 1865 he was the wealthiest man in the region. For several years he drove about 8,000 cattle a year to New Mexico and Colorado. In 1872 he moved his herds to Colorado, and that year about ninety armed men under him reclaimed several thousand Texas-branded cattle in New Mexico. He died on Christmas Day 1880, thrown from a wagon behind a runaway team.

What the plaque says

Nearby Battle Creek was given its name in 1840 by a small band of men who had traveled to this area in search of hostile Indians. A fight took place near the creek when a raiding party attacked the group. Approximately, twenty years later, cattleman John Hittson (1831-1880) established his ranch headquarters at the site of the battleground. The headquarters, used only when cattle were rounded up from surrounding lands, consisted of corrals, branding pens, and a small shelter. It is believed to be the first ranching headquarters established in Callahan County. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 9.1 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.
• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 19 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Old Jail Art Center — 25 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.

More markers nearby

• Burkett Pecan Tree — 1.3 mi
• Site of Scranton Academy — 5.6 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Cisco — 8.9 mi
• Cisco College — 8.9 mi