London Town Square

London's size followed the farms around it. About thirty people lived there in 1884, and by 1896 it had about 100, with a flour mill, a saloon and two hotels among its businesses. In 1914 five general stores served about 175 people, and by 1931 the town had sixteen businesses and some 360 residents. It lost about half its people in the Depression, revived to about 420 by 1943, then shrank as area farms were consolidated and mechanized, to about 110 in 1972. It recovered to 180 by 1982 and held there through 2000.

What the plaque says

London Town Square PLANNED AS COURT SQUARE OF PROPOSED COUNTY. PLATTED ABOUT 1878 BY POSTMASTER LEN L. LEWIS, WHOSE TOWN NAME CHOICE, "BETTY LEWIS "(FOR HIS WIFE), WAS VETOED BY POSTAL AUTHORITIES. "LONDON" IS THOUGHT TO HAVE BEEN PROPOSED BY THE PEARL FAMILY, FOR THEIR OLD KENTUCKY HOME TOWN. ON THE WESTERN CATTLE TRAIL, LONDON HAD TRAIL DRIVERS AS RESIDENTS AND SOLD SUPPLIES TO CREWS PASSING WITH LONGHORN HERDS. BUSINESSES IN EARLY DAYS: BLACKSMITH SHOP, STORES, COTTON GIN. ALSO THERE WERE 3 CHURCHES AND A SCHOOL. COKE R. STEVENSON, 19411-47 TEXAS GOVERNOR, LIVED HERE AS A CHILD. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 16 mi
  A limestone cave on the James River where about four million Mexican free-tailed bats raise their young each summer, kept open to visitors by a family's gift.
• Kimble County Historical Museum — 17 mi
  A free county museum in Junction, the town at the meeting of the North and South Llano, with the papers, photographs and tools of a ranching county.
• Fort Mason — 21 mi
  A reconstructed officers' quarters on Post Oak Hill above Mason, standing where the army's stone fort was taken apart by the town that grew up below it.
• Presidio de San Saba — 22 mi
  The ruins of the largest Spanish presidio in Texas, built in 1757 to guard a mission to the Lipan Apache, where the Comanche and their allies first turned back Spain's frontier.

More markers nearby

• London Post Office — 0.2 mi
• Old Beef Trail Crossing — 6.4 mi
• John L. Jones Ranch — 7.4 mi
• Site of Ivy Chapel and School — 9.2 mi