Kemp Public Library

The library was one of many public roles for Joseph Kemp. He sat on the Wichita Falls school board from 1883 to 1885, was appointed county treasurer two years after arriving and was then elected to two terms. In 1915 he built a model dairy barn and brought Guernsey cattle to the area as an example to other dairymen. He served as a University of Texas regent from 1917 to 1921, and for thirty-six years he lobbied in Austin and Washington for the constitutional amendment allowing bonds for irrigation districts. He died in Austin on November 16, 1930.

What the plaque says

In the 1890s Flora Anderson Kemp (1861-1957) and other women in Wichita Falls circulated books among friends. After many attempts to begin a library, Mrs. Kemp in 1916 asked her husband, pioneer businessman Joseph Alexander Kemp (1861-1930), for a public library building as a Christmas gift. In 1918 Kemp presented the main structure of this building to the citizens of Wichita Falls. The community donated 4,000 books and raised money for furnishings. While the building has been enlarged and remodeled several times, the original structure remains intact. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 0.5 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 — 0.6 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 — 18 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

• Times Publishing Company — steps away
• Wichita Falls Junior College — 0.4 mi
• First County Officials — 0.5 mi
• Texas Governor James V. Allred — 0.5 mi