Taylor County

In 1880 Taylor County had 917 people, more than 30,000 cattle and almost 6,000 sheep, and only 157 acres of wheat. Crops brought fences, and the fence-cutting dispute between open-range cattlemen and farmers came close to shooting before new land laws in the late 1880s. Cotton then took over: more than 101,000 acres by 1910 and over 150,000 by 1929, with tenants working many of the farms. Oil, found in 1929, mattered from the early 1940s, when production rose from 26,000 barrels in 1938 to 403,000 in 1944. Dyess Air Force Base followed in 1956.

What the plaque says

Created 1858. Named for Edward, James and George Taylor, 18, 20, and 22, Tennesseans who came to Texas in 1833 and died at the Alamo, March 6, 1836. Organized 1878, with county seat at Buffalo Gap, through which went the Fort Concho to Fort Belknap stagecoach and longhorns on western trail up to Kansas. County seat was moved to Abilene in 1883. Of the 254 Texas counties, 42 bear Indian, French or Spanish names. 10 honor such colonizers as Stephen F. Austin, "Father of Texas". 12 were named for Washington, Clay and other American patriots. 96 were named for men like the Taylors who fought in the Texas War for Independence (15 dying at the Alamo), signed the Declaration of Independence, or served as statesmen in the Republic of Texas. 23 have the names of frontiersmen and pioneers. 11 honor American statesmen who worked for the annexation of Texas; 10, leaders in Texas since statehood, including jurists, ministers, educators, historians, statesmen; and 36, men prominent in the Confederacy during the Civil War. El Paso and 8 others have geographical names, San Jacinto and Val Verde were named for battles; Live Oak and Orange, for trees; and Mason for a fort. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 4.0 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.
• Abilene State Park — 8.4 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.
• Frontier Texas! — 12 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.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 25 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

• Town of Buffalo Gap — 3.9 mi
• Buffalo Gap College — 3.9 mi
• The Ernie Wilson Museum — 4.0 mi
• The Civilian Conservation Corps at Abilene State Park — 7.6 mi