Roaring Spring

The nearby town began as a Matador Ranch camp. A townsite unofficially called Ragtown was platted in 1912 ahead of the railroad, and the new name came with the post office in 1913, the year the Quanah, Acme and Pacific began service. Passenger trains ran until 1971. It had 514 people in 1940 and 265 in 2000, and in 2003 a gin, a feed mill and two factories. The Handbook of Texas notes that the Roaring Springs Ranch Club keeps a private camp near the springs that gave the town its name.

What the plaque says

From prehistoric days a favorite Indian camp ground * The main camp of the Comanche Indians in December, 1860 when Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured from them near Medicine Mound in Foard County * Famed for the purity of its water * Tradition tells of corn ground in the holes in the sand stones north of this site Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Motley County Historical Museum — 11 mi
  Matador's museum in the 1928 Traweek Hospital, in the county seat a Scottish-owned ranch created by having its cowboys open one-day businesses to pass a state rule.
• Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum — 25 mi
  Crosbyton's museum of Blanco Canyon, built in 1958 as a copy of Hank Smith's Rock House, and the place to learn the canyon's 1871 fight between Mackenzie's cavalry and Quanah's Quahadi Comanche.
• Matador Wildlife Management Area — 32 mi
  Twenty-eight thousand acres of mesquite, shinnery oak and juniper hills in the Rolling Plains north of Paducah, bought by the state in 1959 for wildlife research and open to permit holders.

More markers nearby

• Motley County — 10 mi
• Bob's Oil Well — 11 mi
• The Motley County Railroad — 12 mi
• Marshall Clinton Formby, Jr. — 14 mi