Ira

The Handbook of Texas says Ira Green built his general store sometime before 1893, and that it soon became a popular meeting place and a way station and mail drop for the stagecoaches and mail hacks running north from the Texas and Pacific station at Colorado City. Ira had its first school by 1893, and Green became postmaster when the post office opened. The town reached its peak in the early 1900s but outlasted many small Scurry County towns. In 1980 it had a post office, twelve businesses and an estimated 485 people, and 250 in 1990 and 2000.

What the plaque says

Named for Ira Green, who had a crossroads store near this site. First homes and school were half-dugouts (cellars with windows set above ground level). Post office established 1896. On opening of block 97 to settlers, 1899, area became active farm and ranch community. Oil production since 1923. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Scurry County Museum — 8.5 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
• Heart of West Texas Museum — 16 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• Lake Colorado City State Park — 18 mi
  A mesquite-plains park on a lake built in 1949 to cool a power plant, southwest of Colorado City, where controlled burns are bringing back the grassland and 300 bird species pass through.

More markers nearby

• Coleman Ranch Field Discovery Well — 6.2 mi
• Dunn — 6.9 mi
• Site of Town of Cuthbert — 7.1 mi
• Town of Knapp — 8.2 mi