Site of Red Oak Academy

The marker stands in a fenced backyard on private land, so there is nothing here to visit. The school it names belongs to the story of Burleson. The Handbook of Texas says the Missouri, Kansas and Texas planned a Fort Worth to Hillsboro line in 1881, and its agent Grenville Dodge bought the townsite from Rev. Henry C. Renfro, who was allowed to name the depot. He chose Burleson, for Rufus C. Burleson, his teacher and later president of Baylor. Brushy Mound was bypassed, and the school building moved to the new town in 1900.

What the plaque says

Site of Red Oak Academy An early Texas college, founded near this site (at that time part of Brushy Mound), 1879; re-established as Alta Vista College, 1885. Transferred in 1893 to Presbyterian church, it was renamed Red Oak Academy and inspired name for this section: "Academy Hill". The school closed in 1899. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 13 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.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 14 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 14 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 16 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• The Interurban in Burleson — 1.1 mi
• Crowley Cemetery — 2.3 mi
• Barron Field — 5.5 mi
• Grace Lutheran Church — 5.6 mi