Miller's Spring

John K. Miller was born in North Carolina in 1826 and married there on Christmas Day 1846. Accounts differ on when he reached Grayson County, 1852 by one and 1855 by another, and one says the family lived at the spring from 1860, before the 1866 purchase. His house began as a two-room log dogtrot with a basement; one account calls it an Indian fort. He sold water to neighbors who could not dig wells, laid out two additions and died in January 1908, aged about eighty. Both the spring and the house are Recorded Texas Historic Landmarks.

What the plaque says

Miller's Spring On homesite bought Oct. 15, 1866, by J. K. Miller (1826-1908), this spring supplied his household, neighbors, travelers on nearby ferry road. Civic -minded Miller gave alternate business area lots to the city of Denison; also sites for each early church, first public school, Forest Park. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 1.6 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 4.2 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 16 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.

More markers nearby

• Waples Memorial United Methodist Church — 0.7 mi
• Site of Terrell High School — 0.9 mi
• First Presbyterian Church — 0.9 mi
• Site of Saint Francis Xavier Academy — 1.0 mi