Historical Marker
Hood County News
Granbury, Hood County · Texas
Erected 1974
The paper changed names so often that its own history reads like a list. After Ashley Crockett took over the Vidette by August 1883, it ran as the Graphic, then the Graphic and Hood County Truth, the Graphic Truth, the Democrat, the Graphic-Democrat and, in 1917, the Hood County Herald. The Granbury News line became the Tablet. The Crawfords merged the two in 1946. In 1970 Lon Williams of Mineral Wells introduced an offset press, and Hood County News, Incorporated, bought the paper and gave it its present name.
What the plaque says
Hood County News Successor to "Granbury Vidette" town's first newspaper, founded 1872 by Capt. W.L. Bond and later owned by an 1882 staff recruit, A. W. Crockett (1857-1953), a grandson of the Alamo hero. J.D. Ballard in 1884 started the "Granbury News", later owned by highly regarded Frank Gaston. State Senator A.B. Crawford and wife in 1937 bought from Crockett the last paper he owned, merging it in 1946 with the "Granbury News". In 1964 widowed Mrs. Crawford moved paper into this 1891 building and began to advocate historic preservation--a policy continued by later owners after she retired in 1970. (1974)
Where it stands
32.42857, -97.79312 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Granbury Courthouse Square — 1.0 miA National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
- Acton State Historic Site — 6.4 miThe smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
- Dinosaur Valley State Park — 13 miTheropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.
- Cleburne State Park — 19 miA 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.