Navarro Mills Community

The Handbook of Texas says Navarro Mills was settled in the early 1850s and had the county's first corn mill, a different grain than the plaque's flour mill. Its post office ran from 1874 to 1891. By 1906 the community supported two schools, one with thirty-one white students and one with forty-two Black students. By the mid-1960s the village had shrunk to a church, a cemetery and a few houses, and Navarro Mills Lake, begun in December 1959 and impounding water from March 1963, lay nearby.

What the plaque says

Navarro Mills Community A flour mill built here in the 1860s drew pioneer commerce to this site. Flour was a luxury, used mostly for yeast bread, cakes, and biscuits served on Sundays or special occasions. People traveled for considerable distances with their wheat, and waited sometimes for days to have it ground. The original mill property was bought from R. A. Younger in 1867 by John Summers and sons. Several local residents owned shares in ensuing years. The waters of Rock Creek furnished power. Besides this mill and a cotton gin, there may have been other mills here. The Navarro Mills Post Office opened in 1874. A store, school, blacksmith shop, and other facilities were developed. Local leaders included Confederate veterans W. C. French (1821-97) and R. J. Wright (1837--1926). The flour mill ceased operating in 1881. The post office closed in 1882, to be revived only briefly in later years. The community continued to thrive, however. An 1880s newcomer was a former county judge, James C. Key (1817-1910), whose surname survives in the landmark Tandy Key Road. The cemetery, the Baptist church that was formed in 1901, and the tabernacle built in 1915 mark the site of the historic village. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 16 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 17 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 24 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Hill County Courthouse — 27 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.

More markers nearby

• Dr. George Washington Hill — 2.2 mi
• Near Site of Trading Post of Dr. George Washington Hill — 2.3 mi
• Raleigh Cemetery — 3.7 mi
• Brushie Prairie Methodist Church — 3.9 mi