Site of a Confederate Powder Mill

The mill that blew up here was a Confederate undertaking in a business that rarely forgave mistakes. A 2013 Waxahachie Daily Light account by George Cole, reposted on a Civil War blog, says William Rowen and Tillman Patterson ran it at McMillan and North Rogers streets after it moved from Austin, where the Confederate government had set it up. On April 29, 1863, a series of explosions destroyed it. Rowen and assistant Joshua G. Phillips died of their burns, and David C. Nance survived. The cause was never settled: some blamed Northern sympathizers, others a worker's mistake.

What the plaque says

Site of a Confederate Powder Mill Erected in 1862 by William Rowen. On April 29, 1863 it was destroyed by an explosion and its owner killed. Also killed was Joshua G. Phillips.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — steps away
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 18 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 30 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• Central Presbyterian Church — steps away
• N. P. Sims Library and Lyceum — 0.3 mi
• Site of Marvin College — 0.4 mi
• Bessie Coleman — 0.4 mi