Paris

Wright's road to the 1844 survey was long. The Handbook of Texas says his family came up the Red River by keelboat to Pecan Point in 1816 and that he bought Kiomatia Plantation in Arkansas about 1831. He sat in the Republic's Congress for Red River County, and after recurring malaria he sold Kiomatia and in 1839 bought 1,000 acres in what became Lamar County. The first county court met in his house on February 1, 1841. County officials met in his store on April 29, 1844, and Congress incorporated Paris on February 3, 1845.

What the plaque says

Paris This site marks the first call for survey of the city of Paris, Republic of Texas, 1844. Geo. W. Wright, early settler, soldier in Texas War for Independence, congressman of the Republic, donated 50 acres of land for Lamar County Seat. Plat of lots, blocks and streets was drawn, and from that beginning grew the present city. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 0.6 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 1.3 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Eiffel Tower — 2.6 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 23 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Lamar County, C. S. A. — steps away
• The Paris Fire, 1916 — steps away
• Old Cemetery of Paris — 0.2 mi
• Paris Fire Department — 0.3 mi