Old Public Water Well

Bluff Dale began as Bluff Spring, named by pioneers who settled beside the artesian wells. The post office granted in 1877 gave the place its present name. When the Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railway was built in 1889, Jack Glenn donated land for a townsite a short distance east, on the line. The Handbook says the relocated town prospered, incorporated in 1908, and by 1915 had a bank and a newspaper, the Bluff Dale Sun. Residents numbered 680 in 1936 and 123 in 1980, and the Handbook reports 300 by 1989 and 123 again in 2000.

What the plaque says

Old Public Water Well An early day oasis for travelers and cattle herds. Dug about 1887 by crew building Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railroad. At first artesian, lost power when well was dug nearby to supply locomotives. Local residents, who now have private wells, still use this well in emergencies. (1971) Incising on base of marker: Restored 1965 by Bluff Dale Study and Garden Club

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 14 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.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 15 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Acton State Historic Site — 21 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
• Dublin Bottling Works — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Bluff Dale Suspension Bridge — 0.3 mi
• Morgan Mill Tabernacle — 9.0 mi
• Cornelia Graves — 13 mi
• Post Oak Community — 13 mi