Crosby County

The Smiths met at Fort Griffin, where Hank held an army contract for hay and wood after freighting between San Antonio and the fort. He married Elizabeth Boyle, a woman of Scottish birth, there on May 19, 1874, and they had six children. For four years they ran the Occidental Hotel in the town below the fort. Their move to Blanco Canyon came from a bad debt: the ranch's first owner, who owed Smith heavily, fled his creditors, and Smith took the ranch in partial payment. They arrived in November 1878.

What the plaque says

Crosby County In memory of Henry Clay Smith, 'Uncle Hank'...Born in Germany, August 15, 1836, died, May 20, 1912 and Elizabeth Boyle Smith, 'Aunt Hank,'...Born July 12, 1848, died, June 5, 1925....Pioneers of the Plains, builders of the Rock House, 1877, a monument to frontier hospitality........They sleep above the Cap Rock, at Old Emma. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum — steps away
  Crosbyton's museum of Blanco Canyon, built in 1958 as a copy of Hank Smith's Rock House, and the place to learn the canyon's 1871 fight between Mackenzie's cavalry and Quanah's Quahadi Comanche.
• Spur-Dickens County Museum — 25 mi
  Dickens County's museum on the main block of Spur, a town born on November 1, 1909, when the first train reached the land a New York syndicate was selling off from the Spur Ranch.
• Slaton Harvey House — 27 mi
  A 1912 Santa Fe Harvey House in the railroad town of Slaton, restored as a museum, event hall and five-room inn overlooking a working BNSF yard.
• Motley County Historical Museum — 34 mi
  Matador's museum in the 1928 Traweek Hospital, in the county seat a Scottish-owned ranch created by having its cowboys open one-day businesses to pass a state rule.

More markers nearby

• High Plains Pioneer Henry Clay Smith — steps away
• Crosbyton — steps away
• Crosby County — steps away
• Citizens National Bank — steps away