Site of Flat Top Settlement

Richard Coffey began ranching here about 1862, and he built cabins for his cowboys and closed the settlement inside a picket fence against raids. The Handbook of Texas says the ranches around Flat Top were raided several times in the early 1870s, and the county's last victim of such a raid was killed near here in 1875. The road along the telegraph line also brought business: local ranchers supplied the army posts with cattle. Rock corrals built in the 1870s for the stage horses still stood in the mid-twentieth century. A post office operated from 1879 to 1881.

What the plaque says

A frontier center of traffic and communications. First known settler, Richard Coffey, lived here in 1860's, except in weeks when pioneers banded together in Pickettville Fort (NW of here) for protection against Indians. This was on the "Wire Road" -- so named because it followed telegraph line operated by U.S. Army Signal Corps between Fort Concho and Fort Belknap in the 1870's. Also in 1870's, Flat Top was a change station on Fort Concho-Brownwood Stage route. Name of the settlement came from a flat-roof stone building standing here in early days. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 23 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 33 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.

More markers nearby

• Rich Coffey House — 7.3 mi
• Site of Mission San Clemente — 8.2 mi
• Community of Concho — 13 mi
• John S. Chisum, Confederate Beef Contractor — 19 mi