Moffat

Moffat had more names than residents for a while. The Handbook lists Moffattown, Moffatsville, Mount Green and Gandertown, and says Moffat became official when a post office opened in 1872. William Pruett's store, built in the late 1860s, was the social center for several years. By the mid-1880s the town had a district school, three churches and a steam gristmill and gin, with about 200 people. It peaked at 350 in 1890 and fell to 147 by 1900. The post office closed in 1918 and the school in 1974.

What the plaque says

Moffat Founded in 1857 by New York native Dr. Chauncy W. Moffet and his wife, Amelia, the town of Moffat came to be known by a misspelling of their name. A Union loyalist during the Civil War, Dr. Moffet was impressed into Confederate service, but later also served the Union. He disappeared mysteriously after returning to the Moffat community in 1868. The town was platted that year by D.F. and Calista Wiswell. Moffat soon had 3 churches, a school, a post office, stores, and small industries. The Moffat Cemetery, begun before the Civil War, is still in use. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 9.3 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 10 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 31 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 32 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Temple — 6.1 mi
• Tennessee Valley — 6.2 mi
• Moody-Leon United Methodist Church — 6.2 mi
• Pendleton — 6.8 mi