Site of Buchanan

Buchanan's brief life as county seat turned on a number. The Handbook of Texas says Wardville was found to lie more than six miles from the county's geographic center, and voters chose Buchanan on October 4, 1856. The county court first met in a log courthouse on February 16, 1857, and a jail followed in 1858. Water was scarce. When western Johnson County went to new Hood County in 1866, the center moved, Buchanan fell outside the six-mile limit, and voters chose Camp Henderson on March 23, 1867. The post office closed in 1868.

What the plaque says

Site of Buchanan (1/4 mile southwest) Johnson County's second seat of government. (Wardville, just west of Nolan River, at U.S. 67, was first). Buchanan, named for president-elect of the United States, was founded in December 1856 on 60-acre townsite donated by John P. Bailey. A jail (first for the county) and office for the district clerk were built 1858. But lack of a reliable water supply hindered town's growth. Later resurvey of county lines showed necessity for a new site. In 1867, Camp Henderson (renamed Cleburne, July 4, 1867) was chosen. Cemetery is only remaining trace of Old Buchanan townsite. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cleburne State Park — 13 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.
• Acton State Historic Site — 14 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 20 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 23 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Godley — 5.3 mi
• Methodism in Joshua — 5.3 mi
• The Texas World War II Home Front — 5.5 mi
• First Baptist Church Of Cleburne — 5.5 mi