Original Site of Valley Mills

Moving to the railroad nearly cost Valley Mills its new town. The Handbook of Texas says Dr. E. P. Booth and Asbury Stegall started a flour mill on the Bosque in 1867, and the Santa Fe Railway laid tracks a mile south in 1881. Merchants followed the rails. On February 27, 1882, a cyclone hit the new townsite and destroyed many buildings, but families from the original site rebuilt across the river anyway. By the end of 1882 the new town reached into McLennan County. Dairy farming and stock raising were its main industries.

What the plaque says

Original Site of Valley Mills A. H. Steagall and Dr. E. P. Booth purchased 300 acres of land on the north side of the Bosque River in 1868. They mapped out and platted a townsite, which they named Valley Mills. As settlers began arriving in the area, the first homes were built of logs. Soon, however, with products provided by a local sawmill, many more homes were constructed of sawn lumber. In addition to the sawmill, flour and grist mills were also built in the valley. Cotton gins were soon built, as well, to process hundreds of bales from neighboring farms. A United States post office was established in Valley Mills in 1867, with Moses Isenhower serving as first postmaster. Experiencing steady growth, the town at its peak boasted homes, general stores, a drugstore, blacksmith shop, boardinghouse, and stagecoach stop. In 1881 the Santa Fe Railroad line was built through the area, but the tracks were laid on the south side of the river about one mile from the original townsite. Soon thereafter the residents of Valley Mills moved their town to be closer to the rail line. By 1900 the original site of Valley Mills had become a ghost town. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bosque Museum — 9.9 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 18 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Meridian State Park — 20 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.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 21 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.

More markers nearby

• Rock Springs Cumberland Presbyterian Church — 3.0 mi
• Lowry Hampton Scrutchfield — 3.0 mi
• Election Oak — 6.0 mi
• China Spring Cemetery — 8.9 mi