Magnolia

Magnolia is a railroad-era town in a county of timber and oil. When the International-Great Northern came through in 1902, the settlement moved to the line. By 1915 it had about 150 people, telephone service, a sawmill, Baptist and Methodist churches, two general stores, a physician, a hotel, a livery, a druggist, a confectionery, a gin and a blacksmith. By the 1940s an oil field lay a mile east and a lumber camp two miles southeast, and the town had grown to about 400. Magnolia incorporated on September 28, 1968.

What the plaque says

Magnolia In early days, known as Mink's Prairie, and by 1850, shortened to Mink. In 1902, railroad named it Melton to honor Jim Melton, a large landowner in the county, but U. S. Post Office confused it with town of Milton. Citizens renamed it Magnolia for the many magnolia trees beside nearby Mill Creek. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 23 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Navasota — 23 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 25 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 25 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• Noah Griffith (1786-1853) _ Esther Wightman Griffith (1788-1863) — 7.2 mi
• Abraham Roberts Homesite — 9.1 mi
• Spring Creek County — 9.2 mi
• Old Salem Lutheran Church Site — 9.7 mi