Site of Abilene's First School

The tent came before almost everything else. Within weeks of the first trains in January 1881, children were in class under canvas between Hickory and Cedar streets. The town incorporated on January 2, 1883, and took the county seat from Buffalo Gap that October. Abilene High School graduated its first class in 1888. Black children were left out of it: their parents founded a separate school in 1890, and the two systems stayed apart into the 1960s.

What the plaque says

Site of Abilene's First School This site was set aside for use as a school by Stoddard Johnston, a newspaperman who platted the town of Abilene in the early 1880s. While the first schoolhouse was under construction in the spring of 1881, classes were held in a tent pitched between Hickory and Cedar streets. As was typical in early frontier towns, the schoolhouse also served as a community center and was used for church worship services. By 1884, the student population had outgrown the schoolhouse, and a new structure was built elsewhere. This site is a reminder of Abilene's early education history. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 0.4 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 13 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 14 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Abilene State Park — 17 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.

More markers nearby

• Laughter Undertaking Company — steps away
• Abilene Reporter-News — steps away
• The Texas & Pacific Railway: First Railroad Across West Texas — 0.2 mi
• Pine Street Shoot Out — 0.2 mi