Simon Peter Hawkins

Hawkins's colony was not the area's first settlement. Mabel Gilbert, a pioneer of Dallas, had built a house on a bluff above the Red River about ten miles north of present Wichita Falls, and the Handbook of Texas counts him as the county's first permanent Anglo-American settler. Indians twice drove him from his farm, but he returned in 1867 and died there three years later. The Gilbert post office of 1882 was named for him and lasted until 1903. In June 1880 the settlement had a small store and 132 people, and its one-room school became Burkburnett's first.

What the plaque says

(1849 - 1930) A pioneer leader in Wichita County, Simon Peter Hawkins was born in Crockett County, Tenn. He married Sara A. Hardin (1852-1937) in 1869. They had eight children. With his brother-in-law John G. Hardin, Hawkins moved his family to Johnson County, Texas, in 1875. Seeking better land, the men found lush grass in present Wichita County and settled their families on the north side of Gilbert Creek. After fire destroyed the Hawkins' dugout home, the family moved about 1/4 mile. South of this site, Hawkins signed a petition for establishing Wichita County. He voted in the first county election and served on the first county grand jury. He helped organize the First Baptist Church, the first Masonic Lodge and the first school in this area. Hardin bought a store patronized by Indians and cowboys. The cowboys called the colony Nesterville. When the post office was established in 1882, it was renamed Gilbert. Hawkins served as mail carrier, making two trips weekly to Wichita Falls. After the railroad arrived, settlers in Gilbert moved about one mile to the new townsite of Burkburnett. When oil discoveries turned Burkburnett into a boomtown, Hawkins and his wife moved to Mineral Wells. He died there and was buried in the Burkburnett Cemetery. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 13 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.
• Kell House Museum — 13 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.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 25 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.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 29 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• John Gerham Hardin — 0.9 mi
• Samuel Burk Burnett — 1.0 mi
• First National Bank of Burkburnett — 1.1 mi
• Fowler Discovery Well — 1.4 mi