Site of Old Pease City

The town was named for a river that no one had mapped until a railroad survey. In 1856 Jacob de Córdova, working for the Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad Company, found the stream and named it for Governor Elisha M. Pease. The Pease rises from three branches in northern Cottle County, runs about a hundred miles east, forms the line between Hardeman and Foard counties and enters the Red River northeast of Vernon. Its tributaries include Raggedy Creek and Talking John Creek in Foard County.

What the plaque says

Site of Old Pease City Founded in 1880 by Benjamin E. Lower, John Wesley and wife, first settlers. Lower became the first postmaster, 1880; Mrs. Wesley was second, 1882. Place was named for Pease River and E. M. Pease, Texas Governor (1853-57 and 1867-69). Second group of settlers was family of W. T. Dunn. Stone post office-trading post served 3,500 square miles of sparsely settled country. Mail delivery was by stage or horse. The post office was abolished 1885 when Margaret became seat of Hardeman County. In 1891 site of Old Pease City and Margaret became part of Foard County. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Copper Breaks State Park — 4.5 mi
  Red badlands on the Pease River between Quanah and Crowell, streaked with the green copper that lured a Civil War general here to mine, with longhorns and a dark-sky designation.
• Fire Hall Museum — 5.3 mi
  Crowell's local museum in the 1922 firehouse on Main Street, in a county-seat town that was almost wiped away by the tornado of April 1942 and rebuilt.
• Quanah, Acme and Pacific Depot Museum — 16 mi
  The Spanish Colonial Revival depot of a little railroad that set out for El Paso and never got past Floydada, now Hardeman County's museum alongside the county's 1890 jail.
• Red River Valley Museum — 24 mi
  Vernon's museum on College Drive, with rooms on the Waggoner ranch empire, Doan's Crossing and early Vernon, and the largest known collection of Electra Waggoner Biggs's art.

More markers nearby

• Foard County — 2.4 mi
• Crowell Schools — 4.9 mi
• First Christian Church — 5.2 mi
• Robert L. Foard — 5.4 mi