Jefferson

In 1971 about 47 blocks of Jefferson with 56 historic structures were listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and roughly ten other buildings have listings of their own, among them the antebellum Excelsior Hotel and the Planters Bank and Warehouse. Each spring the town holds a three-day historic pilgrimage, and since 1955 it has included a reenactment of the Diamond Bessie murder trial. The Handbook of Texas dates the laying out of the townsite to about 1842, not the plaque's 1836, and puts the oil discovery in the late 1930s.

What the plaque says

Jefferson Founded 1836. Named for President Thomas Jefferson. Chief river port of Texas, 1846-1870. This prosperous ante-bellum city became a Confederate Quartermaster Depot; produced boots, shoes, iron goods, preserved meats for army. Nearby oil field discovered in 1939. Many fine old homes and other landmarks. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Excelsior House Hotel — 1.5 mi
  A brick-and-timber hotel at 211 West Austin that began as a river captain's boarding house in 1858 and was revived by a garden club in 1959, and still takes guests with rosewood furniture.
• Jefferson Historical Museum — 1.5 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 11 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park on the Texas shore of Caddo Lake, where the Caddo told of a lake made by wind-driven water and visitors now paddle Big Cypress Bayou past moss-hung bald cypress.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 13 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• John M. Vines — 0.9 mi
• Richard Waterhouse — 0.9 mi
• First Baptist Church of Jefferson — 1.3 mi
• Site of Home of Captain George T. Todd — 1.3 mi