Petersburg

Petersburg's townsite was platted in 1909, but fewer than 100 people lived there until the Fort Worth and Denver Railway arrived. Wheat and milo were the area's main crops until cotton was first planted in 1905. Once the town became a farming and rail shipping center it grew quickly: twenty-two businesses and 500 people in 1949, 1,400 people in 1960 and 1,633 by 1980, when businesses included the Wylie Manufacturing Company, Hughes Trucking and a weekly newspaper, the Post. The population was 1,262 in 2000.

What the plaque says

Petersburg First established, Sept. 9, 1891, as a rural post office about 5 miles northeast, at the home of Capt. Zack Peters, whose wife, Margaret, was postmaster. Ed M. White built first house at present site, about 1895. When Peters family moved from area, in 1896, White assumed postmaster duties. In 1902, he opened the first business in Petersburg, a general mercantile store. The settlement incorporated in 1927, and elected Charles Schuler as mayor. After arrival of Fort Worth & Denver Railroad, in 1928, Petersburg became an agricultural marketing center for the area. 1973

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Silent Wings Museum — 20 mi
  The museum of the American combat glider pilots of World War II, in Lubbock's old airport terminal on the field where most of them earned their wings.
• American Windmill Museum — 24 mi
  Lubbock's park of restored water-pumping windmills and early wind chargers, more than 70 of them turning outdoors and the rare ones under roof, with a megawatt-era turbine overhead.
• Lubbock Lake Landmark — 24 mi
  A bend of Yellow House Draw on Lubbock's north edge where digging has found nearly 12,000 years of people on the Southern High Plains, layer on layer, from Clovis to the 1880s.
• Buddy Holly Center — 25 mi
  The city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.

More markers nearby

• Estacado Cemetery — 9.8 mi
• Pearce Chapel-Strip Cemetery — 10.0 mi
• Farmer Community — 11 mi
• Cone Cemetery — 12 mi