Site of Curfew by John J. Clinton

By one account Clinton's first midnight shot came on December 31, 1884, fired into the air at South First and Chestnut as the signal that the saloons must close; the ordinance made no exception for New Year's Eve. He was also the town's volunteer fire chief. After he died on June 1, 1922, his friend Jinks McGee kept the custom going for a few more years, until firing a gun inside the city limits became a misdemeanor. Clinton lies in the Masonic section of Abilene Municipal Cemetery, under a flat gray granite marker.

What the plaque says

Site of Curfew by John J. Clinton (1848-1922) Here each New Year's Eve at midnight for thirty-seven years John J. Clinton, Abilene chief of police, emptied his revolver. He began in 1885, decreeing that saloons close at midnight, and that trigger-happy cowboys and townsmen observe the curfew. After saloon era passed, his practice became a commemoration. Ireland-born Clinton was a Confederate soldier; later scout for U.S. Army, was wounded at "The Fight for the Water Hole." He was policeman at Dodge City, Kansas, then served Abilene until his death. Men respected him for his courage and integrity. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 0.3 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 — 12 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

• The Texas & Pacific Railway: First Railroad Across West Texas — steps away
• Pine Street Shoot Out — steps away
• Abilene Reporter-News — steps away
• Taylor, Edward, James, & George — steps away