Jarrell

The plaque ends with the tornado; the National Weather Service supplies the hour. The F5 tornado reached the Double Creek subdivision at 3:48 p.m. on May 27, 1997, by a clock found in a destroyed house, and all 27 deaths occurred there. About 40 structures were destroyed and nearly 300 cattle in a nearby pasture died. Keith and Cindy Moehring and their sons Erick and Ryan were killed in their bathroom, according to Keith's sister Sheryl Steger, and the Igo family lost five. At the twentieth anniversary, relatives said they wanted their dead remembered.

What the plaque says

Jarrell During the early 1900s, plans were made for the construction of the Bartlett and Western Railway to run from Bartlet to Florence. The line was to serve as a feeder to the MK&T (Katy) Railroad, which passed daily through Bartlett. Temple real estate developer Orlando D. Jarrell encouraged railroad executives to direct the route through a portion of property that he leased, rather than through the established town of Corn Hill, situated two miles to the south. Jarrell partnered with E. C. Haeber of Bartlett who provided the capital to purchase the property. Jarrell then platted a townsite and began to sell lots in December 1909. By December 1911, when the railroad finally arrived in Jarrell, most of the residents of Corn Hill had moved to the new town. In fact, between 20 and 25 structures were also moved from Corn Hill to Jarrell. In 1911, E. M. Wilson, a cotton buyer from Taylor, built a mercantile, bank, and hardware shop in downtown Jarrell. A post office was first opened in the town on March 8, 1912. Jarrell's first school was a frame structure, and a two-story brick building was constructed in 1916. Three cotton gins in Jarrell processed the crop on which the town was so dependent. However, the decline of the cotton industry during the 1920s & 1930s along with the closing of the Bartlett and Western Railway in 1935 resulted in a significant population decline. The town's 1914 peak population of 500 declined to 200 by 1930, but again grew to 350 by 1945. Jarrell made national news headlines when a May 27, 1997 tornado killed 27 residents and injured many others. The town of Jarrell carried on, incorporated in 2001, and has since experienced rapid population growth. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 14 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 16 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• The Round Rock — 23 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 24 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

More markers nearby

• Corn Hill Community — 2.2 mi
• Cornhill Cemetery — 2.6 mi
• Daniel Harrison — 2.7 mi
• Community of Theon — 5.3 mi