Picketville

When Stephens County organized in 1876, Picketville became the county seat and took a new name: Breckenridge, for John C. Breckinridge, the Kentucky senator and vice president, though the spelling changed along the way. That year brought the first courthouse and a post office. The Northwest Texian, the town's first newspaper, began in 1877, and E. W. Davenport later started the Democrat, which lasted until 1924. An early-1880s school's upper floor, the Opera House, held church services. By 1884 the town had about 500 people, a bank and five general stores.

What the plaque says

(0.5 mi. E) One of Stephens County's first white settlements, Picketville was founded before the Civil War (1861-65) on Gunsolus Creek. Without military defense during the war, families "forted up" here for protection against hostile Indian attacks. The name probably came from picket construction in which tree limbs were placed on end and chinked with mud. Picketville served as the county seat until Breckenridge was settled in 1876. Then the town began to decline, leaving only a cemetery. After many graves were accidentally destroyed, Boy Scout troops restored and fenced the site. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Griffin State Historic Site — 21 mi
  The ruins of an 1867 cavalry post on a plateau above the Clear Fork of the Brazos, judged unfit for habitation and used nine more years, now home to the official state longhorn herd.
• Old Jail Art Center — 23 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.
• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — 29 mi
  Graham's 1936 Art Moderne post office, with a New Deal mural by Alexandre Hogue inside, now the free museum of Young County in the town where the Texas cattle raisers first organized.

More markers nearby

• Stephens County Courthouse — 1.4 mi
• Walter Prescott Webb's Formative Years — 1.4 mi
• Camp Breckenridge, C.S.A. — 1.4 mi
• Parks Camp — 7.9 mi