Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, Substation No. 12, Home of Hybrid Sorghums

Chillicothe grew up on Wanderer's Creek near the headquarters of W. H. Worsham's R2 Ranch and took its name from A. E. Jones's hometown in Missouri. Its post office opened in 1883 with Charles E. Jones as postmaster, and the town developed quickly after the Fort Worth and Denver City arrived in 1887. A fire destroyed it in 1890, and residents rebuilt south of the tracks. Wheat elevators went up in 1892 and 1893, and the town incorporated in 1907 with 800 people. The Handbook of Texas notes its nickname, the Iris Village, for its many irises.

What the plaque says

Forage crop field station at which in 1909 (when situated 6 miles NE) was planted the United States' first sudan grass, a sorghum especially adaptable to semiarid regions. The United States Department of Agriculture had brought the seed from Khartum, Africa. Here ensued more than a half-century of sorghum breeding under supervision of A. B. Conner, J. R. Quinby, J. C. Stephens and other scientists, culminating in hybrid seed for more productive crops that revolutionized the agriculture of the Great Plains. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Red River Valley Museum — 12 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.
• Copper Breaks State Park — 15 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.
• Quanah, Acme and Pacific Depot Museum — 15 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.
• Doan's Crossing — 18 mi
  A store, an adobe house and a granite marker of ranch brands at the Red River ford where the Western Trail herds left Texas, kept alive by a May picnic held since 1884.

More markers nearby

• Medicine Mound Community — 4.5 mi
• Site of the Town of Margaret — 11 mi
• Wilbarger County — 12 mi
• Early Wilbarger County — 14 mi