Mary Daggett Lake

The plaque calls her a botanist, and the training behind the word was long. Lake studied botany at Cottey College in Missouri, then spent twelve years in Dr. Albert Ruth's private herbarium, now part of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas collection. With Eula Whitehouse she wrote the wildflower column for the Texas Almanac, and in 1926 she published The Legend of the Bluebonnet. She also wrote the Texas Federation of Garden Clubs song, Have You Ever Been to Texas in the Spring. In wartime she promoted gardens as patriotic work.

What the plaque says

Mary Daggett Lake (Nov. 11, 1880-Mar. 1, 1955) A botanist, musician, author and clubwoman, Fort Worth native Mary Daggett Lake played a prominent role in the civic life of her hometown throughout the first half of the 20th century. She chronicled the lives of pioneer Fort Worth families in a series of articles for the Star-Telegram in the 1920s and 1930s. Through her active involvement and leadership with the Fort Worth Garden Club, the Texas Federation of Garden Clubs, the Fort Worth Park Board and the National Council of State Garden Clubs, Mary gained widespread recognition for her efforts in landscape conservation and beautification. Her labors on behalf of the Fort Worth Garden Center led to a national award for its work. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 0.5 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 0.8 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 2.4 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 3.8 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Herbert M. Hinckley — 0.7 mi
• Camp Bowie in World War I — 1.0 mi
• Fort Worth Zoological Park — 1.1 mi
• Texas Log Cabins — 1.1 mi