Post Oak Community

The plant on the plaque's last line was the biggest change the county has seen. Construction of Comanche Peak began in 1974, and Squaw Creek was dammed into a reservoir to supply cooling water. Before then Somervell had almost no industry, and between 1940 and 1960 the number of farms had already fallen by more than half. By the mid-1980s taxable property in the county neared two billion dollars. The first reactor did not come on line until 1990, the second until 1993.

What the plaque says

Post Oak Community Settled in the years following the Civil War, post Oak was an agricultural community for most of its history. Its name, derived from trees which are common in Somervell County, was solidified by 1896, when School District No. 2 took the name Post Oak. The lives of Post Oak residents revolved around a number of community institutions. Three churches have served as spiritual and social establishments: Pleasant Point Missionary Baptist Church, founded in 1893; a Christian church, established in 1895; and a Primitive Baptist church, organized in 1907. Of the three, the Missionary Baptist church played the largest role in Post Oak's development. The Rev. Seaborn J. Foust, who pastured a number of churches in Hood and Somervell counties, donated adjoining parcels of land that formed the center of Post Oak community with land for Post Oak School (1892), a community church building (1905), and a cemetery (1913), although residents had used the burial ground several years earlier. In 1931, the church and school buildings burned. The church disbanded, but the community rebuilt the schoolhouse the following year. Later, the Mitchell family restored the former school building as a community chapel in memory of Post Oak pioneers. Most early residents grew cotton, though many diversified by also planting fruit trees. Later, peanuts became a vital crop, and some landowners also raised cattle. By the 1940s, many residents left this rural area and moved to cities. In 1972, however, Texas Utilities began construction of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant on the settlement's eastern edge, reviving Post Oak's population and ensuring the continued growth of this historic community. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 2.5 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 11 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Acton State Historic Site — 13 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
• Cleburne State Park — 15 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.

More markers nearby

• Somervell County — 4.4 mi
• Mitchell Bend Cemetery — 7.0 mi
• Comanche Peak — 7.3 mi
• George's Creek Baptist Church — 10 mi