Krasna Settlement

Krasna's school joined the Orchard district in 1893, and Orchard was the railroad town a few miles to the east. The Santa Fe built through its site in 1880, and in 1890 S. K. Cross promoted it and sold ranch tracts to German, Bohemian and Polish settlers. The name recalls early attempts at fruit growing that failed. A post office came in 1893, twelve families from Akron, Ohio, arrived in 1894, and by 1896 the one-teacher school had 43 pupils among about 250 residents. In 1948 several districts merged into the Orchard consolidated school district.

What the plaque says

Krasna Settlement Krasna Settlement In 1891, Francis Smith subdivided and sold property in this area. In 1892, he gave four acres for a school and church for Czech settlers forming the community of Krasna, which means beautiful in the Czech language. That year, local families built a school, and in 1893, it became part of Orchard Common School District. By 1894, it was part of the Krasna District, which included Connersville School for African American students. Two additional schools, Moravia and Central, were later built. Flooding and storms caused a decline of the settlement, and the Catholic Church at nearby Wallis (Austin County) attracted settlers; there was never a church at Krasna. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 15 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 15 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Brazos Bend State Park — 30 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.

More markers nearby

• Guardian Angel Catholic Church — 2.5 mi
• Wallis State Bank — 3.2 mi
• Wallis Methodist Church — 3.4 mi
• St. Paul Lutheran Church — 3.6 mi