Historical Marker
Medicine Mound Community
Medicine Mound, Hardeman County · Texas
Erected 1999
The Handbook of Texas describes the four mounds that gave the town its name as rising 200 to 250 feet and says they were camps and ceremonial sites of the Comanches (Numunuu). In its best years the town had a newspaper, the Citizen. The Handbook dates the fire that destroyed most of the business buildings to 1932, and says few were rebuilt; by 1940 Medicine Mound had six stores and 210 people. Its school was consolidated with Quanah's in 1955, and the post office and gin closed in the 1950s. The population was fifty from 1980 through 2000.
What the plaque says
Early inhabitants of this area were Comanche and Kiowa Indians whose campsites were situated around four dolomite hills called Medicine Mounds and known for their healing properties. In 1854, area land was deeded to a railway company. Anglo settlers began to arrive in the 1870s. A small village developed but was moved 2.5 miles north in 1908 when the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway was built. A townsite was platted that year and was fully established by 1911. At its peak, Medicine Mound boasted 22 businesses and a population of 500. Economic hardships, the Great Depression and a 1933 fire that burned the entire town were primary forces in the town's eventual demise. The last business closed in 1966. (1999)
Where it stands
34.18726, -99.59469 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Copper Breaks State Park — 10 miRed badlands on the Pease River between Quanah and Crowell, streaked with the green copper that lured a Civil War general here to mine, with longhorns and a dark-sky designation.
- Quanah, Acme and Pacific Depot Museum — 11 miThe Spanish Colonial Revival depot of a little railroad that set out for El Paso and never got past Floydada, now Hardeman County's museum alongside the county's 1890 jail.
- Red River Valley Museum — 16 miVernon's museum on College Drive, with rooms on the Waggoner ranch empire, Doan's Crossing and early Vernon, and the largest known collection of Electra Waggoner Biggs's art.
- Fire Hall Museum — 16 miCrowell's local museum in the 1922 firehouse on Main Street, in a county-seat town that was almost wiped away by the tornado of April 1942 and rebuilt.