Lon Morris College

Jacksonville offered the property of Sunset Academy as an inducement to bring the school here in 1894. The University of Texas accredited it in 1895, and the Twin Towers Building of 1909 opened the way to a junior college curriculum. Cecil Peeples became president in 1935 and held the post nearly four decades, adding twelve permanent buildings and raising the endowment past eight million dollars. Fall 2009 brought a record enrollment above 1,000. The college filed for bankruptcy in 2012, students were offered places at Tyler Junior College, and the campus was auctioned in 2013.

What the plaque says

Lon Morris College Oldest junior college in Texas. Founded in Kilgore by Dr. Isaac Alexander, pioneer educator. In 1875 it became property of the East Texas (now the Texas) Conference of the Methodist Church. It was moved to Jacksonville in 1894. A junior college since 1912, renamed Alexander College (1916), it was retitled in 1924 to honor Pittsburg (Tex.) banker R. A.(Lon) Morris. First junior college in Texas with a Phi Theta Kappa scholarship fraternity; Also member Southern Association of Colleges longer than any other junior college in the state. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 23 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.
• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 26 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 28 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.

More markers nearby

• Church Founded by Chaplain Nicholas A. Davis, C.S.A. — 0.5 mi
• Jacksonville College — 0.8 mi
• Jacksonville Independent School District — 0.9 mi
• Site of First Free Public School — 0.9 mi