Old Hico

Hico moved once and then spent decades rebuilding. The Handbook says the town began on Honey Creek in the mid-1850s, with a post office in 1860 that closed in 1867 and reopened in 1871. When the Texas Central Railroad came in 1880, citizens moved the town about two and a half miles to the tracks, and it incorporated in 1883. An Old Settlers' Reunion began in 1882. In 1890 a fire burned the east side of Pecan Street, and weeks later another took the west side. Rebuilding in stone ended the fire danger.

What the plaque says

Old Hico This site on Honey Creek marks the beginning in 1856 of the settlement of Hico. Earliest families to locate here were those of John Q. Anderson, M. A. Fuller, J. G. Barbee, James R. and Henry Fuller, Isaac Steen, Isaac and Thomas Malone. In 1860 John R. Alford, a merchant, became the first postmaster. Rocks from ruins of the old mill were used in the erection of this memorial. (1963)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hamilton County Courthouse — 18 mi
  A limestone courthouse of 1886-87 on the Hamilton square, built after the county's 1878 courthouse burned, enlarged in the early 1930s and rededicated in 2012 after restoration.
• Meridian State Park — 19 mi
  A 505-acre park in Bosque County where World War I veterans of a Civilian Conservation Corps company dammed Bee Creek in 1933-34 for a 72-acre lake and cut stone buildings around it.
• Dublin Bottling Works — 21 mi
  The Erath County plant that bottled Dr Pepper with cane sugar from 1891 until a 2012 settlement ended its Dr Pepper license, and that still makes its own sodas the same way.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 24 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.

More markers nearby

• Fairy Cemetery — 7.0 mi
• Martin's Gap — 7.2 mi
• Olin Baptist Church — 7.4 mi
• The Rev. Henry Hurley — 7.9 mi