Old Townsite of Content

The Handbook of Texas says Dan Hale became Content's first postmaster in 1882, the year it got a school, and that a hotel opened in 1888. Over time Content had several stores, two gins, a lime kiln and a blacksmith shop, and in 1890, with 200 people, it was the county's second largest town. After the Santa Fe extension missed it in 1909, most residents moved to Goldsboro. When the Tokeen post office closed in 1916, the old name came back. Content had twenty-five people in 1940 and 1960 and only three houses by 1970.

What the plaque says

Named because of contentment of this valley. Founded 1881 by Dan W. Hale. Michael C. Bright, 1882 settler, early county commissioner, had a general store at this site. Family worked for progress of the area. Renamed "Tokeen," town bypassed by railroad in 1909. Post office was discontinued in 1916. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 14 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.
• Abilene State Park — 17 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 18 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 24 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.

More markers nearby

• Ranger Campsite — 0.9 mi
• Ranger Peak — 0.9 mi
• Cotton Production in Runnels County — 0.9 mi
• Atoka Cemetery — 4.6 mi