Lamar County

Three county seats in four years is the story behind the plaque's short list. The Handbook of Texas says Lafayette received forty acres from John Watson on June 22, 1841, but no lots were ever sold, and the county court kept meeting there until Congress passed a law in 1842 requiring each seat to lie within five miles of the county's geographic center. Mount Vernon was named seat in 1843, and again no courthouse was built. In 1844 a Pinhook-area landowner offered a townsite, and the first county court term in Paris opened on April 29.

What the plaque says

Lamar County Created December 17, 1840 from Red River County. Organized in 1841. Named in honor of Mirabeau B. Lamar, 1798-1859. Father of Texas education. President of the Republic of Texas 1838-1841. Lafayette, 1841, Mount Vernon, 1843, Paris, originally called Pinhook, 1844, have served as county seat.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 2.8 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 3.1 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Eiffel Tower — 4.7 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 22 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Central National Road of the Republic of Texas — 2.0 mi
• Burial Site of John S. Chisum — 2.1 mi
• Old Cemetery of Paris — 2.4 mi
• Paris — 2.5 mi