Hubert H. Moss

The lake he wanted was finished fourteen years after he died. The Handbook of Texas says Hubert Moss pressed the Water Control Board in Austin for a city reservoir, and he died of a heart attack in 1952 while hunting arrowheads near Era. Construction of Fish Creek Dam began in December 1964 and ended in September 1966. The earth dam is 1,500 feet long and ninety-six feet high, and the lake cost $1,639,000. Archeologist Dessamae Lorrain of Southern Methodist University recovered pottery from five prehistoric Indian sites it flooded, with National Park Service money.

What the plaque says

Hubert H. Moss Hubert H. Moss was born in Woodbine in 1892. After attending North Texas State Normal College, he became a teacher before leaving Cooke County to serve in World War I. After the war, Moss taught high school and became a chemistry professor at newly formed Gainesville Junior College, where he was a trusted student advisor. From 1946 until his death in 1952, he served as Cooke County school superintendent. As president of the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce in 1951, he crusaded for the creation of a lake to secure Gainesville's future water needs. The city finished construction of Hubert H. Moss Lake in 1966 on the Fish Creek site he suggested. Moss was an outstanding educator whose vision continues to benefit his community. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 1.6 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 21 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 25 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Gainesville Junior College — steps away
• Clark, Randolph Lee (1871-1941) — steps away
• Moffett Park — 0.8 mi
• Cooke County, C.S.A./2nd Frontier Regiment — 0.8 mi