Love's Lookout

Larissa, 3.5 miles northwest, is the lost town in this view. Tennessee settlers led by Thomas McKee resettled the area in 1846, and his son T. N. McKee laid out the townsite in 1847, naming it for an ancient Greek city of learning. By the mid-1850s it had four stores, a salt works, a church and a three-story college building with two dormitories. Larissa College closed in 1870. A meningitis epidemic in 1872 hastened the decline, the railroad passed three miles east in 1882, and most residents moved to Mount Selman. The post office closed in 1905.

What the plaque says

Love's Lookout On this nine mile long ridge there are two historic lookout points which command a view of 30 to 35 miles. Between this site, with an elevation of 713 ft., and Point Lookout (1/4 mi. NW), lies a narrow valley. An Indian trail and later a pioneer road crossed this valley. The pass became known as McKee's Gap in 1846, after Thomas McKee led a group of Presbyterians here from Tennessee and began the town of Larissa (3.5 mi. NW). Named by McKee's son the Rev. T. N. McKee, the village flourished as the location of Larissa College from the 1850s until the 1870s. Point Lookout was a popular recreational area for citizens of Larissa until the railroad bypassed the town and it declined. Around the turn of the century, John Wesley Love (1858-1925) bought this land and developed a 600-acre peach orchard. Known as Love's Lookout, the scenic point was used for outings by area residents. After Love's death, his family gave 22.22 acres, including the lookout site, to the state for a park. The City of Jacksonville bought 25 adjoining acres and developed both tracts as a WPA project. J. L. Brown (1866-1944) and Jewel Newton Brown (1873-1966), former Larissa residents, gave the city 122 acres next to the park in 1940 in tribute to pioneers of Larissa. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tyler Rose Garden and Rose Museum — 22 mi
  More than 38,000 rose bushes of about 600 cultivars in a free city garden, beside a museum of the Texas Rose Festival, which began in 1933, and of the rose industry.
• Goodman-LeGrand House and Museum — 23 mi
  A Tyler house begun in 1859 as four rooms, enlarged by the Goodman family over 73 years, and left to the city in 1939 with its furnishings, in a garden that fills a city block.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 24 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.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Old Neches Saline Road — 3.4 mi
• Fred Douglass School — 3.7 mi
• Jackson Smith — 4.1 mi
• Jacksonville College — 4.4 mi