Moran

The Handbook of Texas names C. B. Snyder as the first settler in the vicinity. Moran shipped farm and ranch produce by rail until service ended in 1969, but after natural gas was found in 1910 it also became an oilfield service center. The town counted about 231 people in 1900, 710 in 1940 and 392 in 1960. In the mid-1980s it still had several schools, three churches and two grain elevators. By 2000 the population was 233, close to where it stood a century earlier.

What the plaque says

Pioneers came to this area as early as the 1860s. During the Civil War (1861-65), they built the temporary fortress settlement of Mugginsville on Deep Creek. At one time, a branch of the western cattle trail passed nearby. Population increased after the arrival of the Texas Central Railroad in 1881. The town of Moran was established by Swope Hull, who operated a grocery store at the rail crossing on Deep Creek in 1883. He was postmaster of the community's first post office, called "Hulltown," which opened August 29, 1883. Hull bought 160 acres between Post Oak and Deep creeks and platted a townsite in March 1884. Most of the property was bought by I. B. (BEM) Scott, who sold his interests in 1890 to M. D. Bray (1845-1926), a prominent local merchant and landowner. The town's name was changed in 1890 to "Hicks" and in 1892 to "Moran" for Texas Central Railroad president John J. Moran. By the 1890s, the community had a school and Baptist, Church of Christ, Cumberland Presbyterian, and Methodist congregations. A newspaper was begun in 1895 and bank in 1902. Incorporated in 1919, Moran was a shipping point for drilling supplies during the oil and gas boom of 1910-30. Today the area's economy is based on farming, ranching, and oil and gas production. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Jail Art Center — 14 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 15 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.
• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 23 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.

More markers nearby

• Ibex — 9.5 mi
• Hittson Ranch Headquarters on Battle Creek — 12 mi
• Burkett Pecan Tree — 12 mi
• Shackelford County — 14 mi