Rowena

The Handbook of Texas gives two origins for the name: the girlfriend of a son of Jonathan Miles, who helped bring the railroad through, or the wife of Santa Fe clerk James Spillane. Rowena had fewer than 100 people in 1904, but cotton and an influx of immigrants brought a boom, and by 1908 it had 400 to 600. Oil and gas were found nearby in the 1960s. The Rowena school district, organized in 1901, closed in 1966, and in 1968 a bungled bank robbery here made national news. In 1970 Rowena had 446 people and twenty-one businesses.

What the plaque says

Rowena was originally laid out by Paul J. Baron in 1897. A Santa Fe Railroad Section House known as Rowena Station had been established in the area in 1888; however, the post office officially denied this name as it too much resembled Ravenna in Fannin County. In what was dubbed Baronsville, Baron and his wife, Mary, established one of the first residences. As the area grew in its initial years, the name of the town remained undetermined. When Gustav Schuhmann became postmaster in 1900, he named his office Bolf, after Land Agent John Bolf. Confusion occurred as the post office was named Bolf in the town of Baronsville at the station known as Rowena. The Barons officially changed the town's name to Rowena in 1904. Many early twentieth-century inhabitants of Rowena were of German and Czech descent. The town became a trading point for those involved in the region's agricultural industry. The first one-room school building, known as Cemetery Hill School, was located about half a mile southeast of town, near Rowena's Cemetery. The school moved closer to the center of town in 1904 and by 1908 had grown from one to four rooms. German Evangelical, Catholic, Baptist, and Moravian Bohemian Presbyterian churches were all established during the first decade of the twentieth century. Rowena's population was estimated to be around 800 in 1930, but had slowly declined to around 450 in 2000. Many social groups such as the Rowena Lions Club remain active in community upkeep. Rowena is also remembered as the birthplace of infamous bank robber Bonnie Parker of the Barrow Gang. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 8.6 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 22 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.
• Miss Hattie's Bordello Museum — 26 mi
  The upstairs rooms on Concho Avenue where a brothel ran from 1902 until the Texas Rangers closed it in 1952, shown on short guided tours with most of the furnishings original.
• San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts — 26 mi
  A free art museum on the Concho beside Fort Concho, founded in the fort's 1868 quartermaster building and known nationally for its biennial ceramics competition.

More markers nearby

• Sons of Hermann Lodge No. 216 — 0.3 mi
• San Clemente Mission — 7.2 mi
• Miles Methodist Church — 8.5 mi
• Charles H. Noyes — 8.6 mi