McDade

Ties and logs cut for the railroad were gathered here, one explanation for the town's first names, Tie City or Tie Town; another is that it was a busy freight and cotton depot. Its first business was a tent saloon selling whiskey at ten cents a tin cup. The town incorporated in 1873. Long before 1883, vigilantes and outlaws called the notch cutters were at war: two suspects were hanged in 1875, and on June 26, 1877, vigilantes stopped a dance, took four men out and lynched them.

What the plaque says

McDade Laid out 1871; named for Jas. McDade, Brenham lawyer. Became a thriving town, important freight center and early-day stage stop. School-church was built 1872; vigilantes (organized 1883) lynched three men on Christmas Eve, causing a shoot-out next day at the Rock Saloon (now a museum). (1968) Incise in base: McDade was settled in 1869.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 12 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 19 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.

More markers nearby

• Three Oaks (Goerlitz) Cemetery — 1.5 mi
• Rural Farms and Communities Before Camp Swift — 5.4 mi
• Camp Swift — 6.1 mi
• Pleasant Grove Cemetery — 7.9 mi