Temple Lea Houston

Legend made Houston a gunfighter. He was a dead shot who often carried a pearl-handled pistol, but the Handbook of Texas calls his supposed shooting contest at Tascosa with Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid strictly fiction: Masterson was in Colorado and the Kid already dead when Houston reached the Panhandle. The reputation still made him dangerous enemies. In Enid an unknown gunman fired at him, and a copy of the Oklahoma Territorial Statutes he was carrying stopped the bullet. He once fired blanks in a courtroom for effect, and Edna Ferber modeled Yancey Cravat of Cimarron on him.

What the plaque says

Temple Lea Houston (August 12, 1860 - August 15, 1905) Brilliant attorney and state senator from this county, 1885-1887. Son of Texas hero Sam Houston. Old courthouse where he practiced law and his home were both near here. He gave dedicatory speech for Texas Capitol in 1888. Married Laura Cross in 1882; they had three sons. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Mobeetie Jail Museum — 0.7 mi
  The 1886 stone jail of the Panhandle's first county seat, the buffalo hunters' Hidetown on Sweetwater Creek that ran the courts for fifteen counties before losing its fort, railroad hopes and county seat.
• Roberts County Museum — 17 mi
  The county museum in Miami's old Santa Fe depot, holding mammoth bones and Clovis points from a 1934 dig, in the cow town that has held a cow-calling contest since 1949.
• Devil's Rope and Old Route 66 Museum — 21 mi
  Barbed wire and the Texas road in McLean's old brassiere factory: the fence that closed the open range, from the salesmen who sold it to the Panhandle ranches it divided.
• Phillips 66 Station, McLean — 21 mi
  A 1929 cottage-style Phillips 66 station on First Street in McLean, the town I-40 went around last and whose Route 66 business district stayed much as it was.

More markers nearby

• Frank Willis, Sr. — steps away
• Fort Elliott Flagpole — steps away
• Captain G. W. Arrington — steps away
• Emanuel Dubbs — steps away