Plain Community

Plain lay four miles east of Tadmor in what is now the Davy Crockett National Forest. The Handbook of Texas puts the first settlement before the late 1880s, a school around 1888, and a post office that ran from 1902 to 1905. By the mid-1930s the community had a church and a number of houses. After World War II most residents moved away, and by the early 1990s only the church and a few widely scattered houses remained in the forest.

What the plaque says

Plain Community Led by members of the Conner, McKinney and Drennan families, this East Texas farming community was permanently settled in the 1850s. Named for the "Plain Folks" who lived here, the settlement included a school, church, grist mill, cotton gin, post office and this cemetery, which began in the mid-1850s on the Frederick Conner family land. Residents of the community farmed and worked for the nearby 4-C sawmill operation at the turn of the century. Although never recorded as a townsite, the Plain Community has survived as a reminder of early Houston County history. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 11 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.
• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 33 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.

More markers nearby

• Community of Tadmor — 2.5 mi
• Ratcliff CCC Camp — 3.0 mi
• Ratcliff — 3.2 mi
• Old Zion Cemetery — 3.3 mi