Sheriff E. Harrison Ikard

The day behind the stone was a gunfight. On September 22, 1925, lawmen and three suspects shot it out in Archer City. A bullet struck Ikard's belt buckle, ricocheted into his body and killed him instantly. Two of the suspects died in the exchange. The third surrendered the next day and was charged with murder. The sheriff's name is among those on the Texas Peace Officers' Memorial in Austin, which lists Archer County's Elijah Harrison Ikard as killed by gunfire on that date.

What the plaque says

Sheriff E. Harrison Ikard This stone is erected to the memory of Sheriff E. Harrison Ikard by the Commissioner's Court, American Legion and local friends in recognition of a man who holding sacred a public trust answered duties call; fearless unto death, September 22, 1925.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Royal Theater — steps away
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 18 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Kell House Museum — 23 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 23 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.

More markers nearby

• Camp Cureton, C.S.A. — steps away
• Archer County Discovery Well — steps away
• A Jesse James Hideout — steps away
• Archer City Methodist Church — steps away