Kell, Frank

Kell's schooling ended at eighteen with a Clifton store job. In 1905 he and W. O. Anderson bought a mill at Vernon. During World War I he chaired the feed and food division of the Texas Advisory Council, and in 1920 he was a director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A collector of Texana, he gave rare books to the University of Texas library, and in 1930 the chamber named him the city's outstanding philanthropist. He still managed 565 miles of railroad when he died on September 17, 1941.

What the plaque says

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Frank Kell helped build Wichita Falls into a major commercial and manufacturing center. Born in Clifton, he worked there and in Galveston in the milling and mercantile businesses in his early career. In 1885 he married Lula Kemp and five of their seven children were born in Clifton. In 1896, the family moved to Wichita Falls, where Lula Kell's brother Joseph A. Kemp was an established businessman. Over the succeeding decades, Frank Kell and Joseph Kemp shepherded the region through a period of exponential growth. Their first joint venture was operation of the Wichita Mill and Elevator Company. As the business expanded, they joined others to charter the Wichita Falls and Northwestern Railroad in 1905, establishing greater access to area wheat fields. The brothers-in-law also chartered the Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad, which linked the city to north Texas coal and oil reserves. They sold the two railroads to the MKT system in 1911. Kell and Kemp were involved in a variety of business interests and civic improvements in the early 20th century. They built a hotel and recreational facilities at Lake Wichita; streetcar lines that traversed the city and led to the lake; and several downtown warehouses and commercial buildings, including the City National Bank, Wichita Falls Route Building and Kemp Hotel. Kell served for 13 years as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas. Milling remained his primary interest until he sold his mills and elevators in the region to General Mills in 1928. When Kell died, he was active in numerous agricultural, commercial and municipal ventures in the growing city of Wichita Falls. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 0.7 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 1.1 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 12 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 19 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Kemp, Joseph Alexander — steps away
• Joseph Sterling Bridwell — 0.6 mi
• Lost Battalion — 0.7 mi
• First County Officials — 0.8 mi