Home of Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard was born in Peaster on January 22, 1906. Because the Cross Plains school lacked a final year, he finished at Brownwood High School in 1923, then earned a business certificate at Howard Payne College in 1927 that he never used. Neighbors complained that his typewriter kept them awake at night. He reportedly earned $500 in one Depression month, when the local bank president made less than a third of that, and paid cash for a new Chevrolet in 1935. Besides Conan, his heroes included Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn and King Kull.

What the plaque says

Adventure and fantasy writer (and creator of Conan) Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) moved in 1919 to this homesite with his parents, Dr. Isaac and Hester (Ervin) Howard. Robert E. Howard wrote hundreds of stories, spanning several genres, and more than 700 poems in his bedroom at this site. Robert began writing at an early age, when he was about eight or nine years old. Robert's mother enjoyed reciting poetry to him and encouraged his writing. He started working to get his stories published when he was fifteen. At the age of eighteen, Robert sold his first story, "Spear and Fang," to pulp magazine Weird Tales for its July 1925 issue. Shortly after the Howards arrived in Cross Plains, so did an oil boom. Robert observed the negative effects an oil boom can have on the townspeople, which contributed to his philosophies and many of his stories. Often his stories told about the corruption of civilization and the rise from and plummet into barbarism, with one moral man against a multitude of immortal adversaries. In his last few years, Robert left clues of his suicidal mood through his poetry, as well as making plans in the event of his demise. He had become primary caretaker for his mother, who had contracted tuberculosis. Just three days after his mother slipped into a coma, Robert committed suicide on June 11, 1936. His mother died the next day, and on June 14 there was a double funeral. An internationally-known author and father of the sword and sorcery sub-genre, Howard's stories have influenced several generations. His works have been translated into 23 languages. Decades after his death, Robert E. Howard and his characters are still being studied, published, filmed, role-played, and enjoyed. (2019)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Brownwood State Park — 20 mi
  A CCC park on a reservoir that filled in a single flood before its dam was done, with stone cabins, a hilltop dance pavilion and a grand staircase climbed by dancers arriving by boat.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 22 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 — 28 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.

More markers nearby

• Fort Mason-Camp Cooper Military Road — 0.2 mi
• Cross Plains Review — 0.5 mi
• Site of Cottonwood Springs — 6.1 mi
• Cottonwood Bank and Post Office — 6.1 mi