Site of Old Picnic Grounds

The Carnegie Library beside this marker is now the Layland Museum. The Handbook of Texas dates the library to 1904 in two entries and 1905 in a third, one of thirty-four Carnegie gifts to Texas communities between 1898 and 1917. The museum began in 1963, when the family of businessman William J. Layland gave part of his collection to the city, and the whole building became the museum after the public library moved out in the late 1970s. Its listed objects include Patrick Cleburne's Colt pistol and saddle.

What the plaque says

Site of Old Picnic Grounds Had wood, water. Was used after 1854 start of Camp Henderson (named for land owner-townsite donor) for decisive public meetings. In 1867 Camp Henderson became county seat. Then men at 4th of July picnic here named town "Cleburne", for Civil War commander of many local veterans. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cleburne State Park — 12 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 — 18 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 — 24 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.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 26 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.

More markers nearby

• Cleburne Town Square — steps away
• First Baptist Church Of Cleburne — steps away
• Johnson, Middleton T., Colonel; Cleburne, Patrick R., General — steps away
• Pioneer Texas Telephones — steps away