Normanna

Normanna began as San Domingo, about two and a half miles west of the present town, around 1848. The Handbook names early settlers Ruben Holbien, Mat Nolan, Virginia O'Neal Hernández and John Young, on land from an eleven-league Mexican grant made in 1831 to José María Uranga. By 1874 the community was called Walton Station. The Norwegians who arrived in 1893 settled two miles east of Walton, and that district is still called the Colony. When a Walton post office opened in 1894, another Texas town already had the name, so it became Normanna.

What the plaque says

Normanna Settlement dates from about 1850. First town, 2 miles west, was called San Domingo for its location near junction of San Domingo and dry Medio Creeks. After railroad was built, 1886, citizens moved to Walton (new flag station) to be on line. Name honored sheriff D. A. T. Walton. When Norwegians settled area, 1890's, Walton became Normanna. Word originally suggested the qualities of old Norse heroes, but through local usage came to mean "Home of the Norseman". Town thrived for years; then declined after series of fires and advent of the automobile. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goliad State Park and Historic Site — 26 mi
  Mission Espíritu Santo on the San Antonio River, a mission ranch whose herds seeded Texas cattle country, rebuilt from ruin by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
• Zaragoza Birthplace State Historic Site — 26 mi
  A rebuilt stone house beside La Bahía marking where Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza, the general of the Battle of Puebla and Cinco de Mayo, was born in 1829.
• Presidio La Bahía — 26 mi
  A Spanish fort on its third site since 1749, held in turn by filibusters, insurgents and Fannin's Fort Defiance, rebuilt in stone in the 1960s around a chapel that never fell.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 26 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Benjamin Dudley Tarlton Dougherty — steps away
• Early Trails in Bee County — 2.2 mi
• Captain A.C. Jones — 2.2 mi
• Tuleta — 3.5 mi