Hovey School

Hovey took its name from G. B. Hovey, an official of the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway, and the Handbook dates the stop and its post office to 1913, when the tracks arrived. The line set off a boom in land speculation across Pecos County. Irrigation projects along the Pecos drew buyers, and Baldridge, Belding, Buena Vista, Chancellor, Girvin and Imperial were founded in these years. By 1920 the county had 207 farms and ranches and almost 8,000 acres of cotton, and its population had grown from 2,071 in 1910 to 3,058.

What the plaque says

Hovey School About 1910 a railroad stop named Hovey was established about 40 miles west of here on the Kansas City, Mexico, and Orient Railroad. By 1913 Hovey contained a depot, post office/general store, and several stock shipping pens. Hovey school was established in 1913. The first school building burned and in 1916 this schoolhouse was erected in Hovey. It served as a one-teacher seven-grade school for Anglo and Hispanic students of the rural ranch community of Hovey. After the school closed in 1938 the building served as a community center. It was moved here in 1987. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Historic Fort Stockton — steps away
  The Ninth Cavalry's post at Comanche Springs from 1867 to 1886, with its 1868 stone guardhouse, three adobe officers' quarters and barracks rebuilt from the original plans.
• Annie Riggs Memorial Museum — 0.3 mi
  An 1899 adobe hotel on Main Street that a twice-married frontier woman bought with her gunfighter husband's estate and ran as a boarding house until she died in 1931.
• Comanche Springs — 0.4 mi
  Once the sixth largest spring in Texas and a campground on the Comanche Trail to Mexico, pumped dry by 1961 under the rule of capture and now flowing again some winters.

More markers nearby

• Site of Comanche Springs — steps away
• O. W. Williams — steps away
• Old Fort Cemetery — 0.4 mi
• Site of Fort Stockton — 0.4 mi