Thaddeus Edgar Johnson

The Handbook of Texas says that by 1892 Vernon had 3,500 residents, served by a street railway, a fire department, electric lighting, three newspapers, two flour mills and two ice factories, and that more than eight church denominations had organized by 1900. The Frisco line joined the Fort Worth and Denver there about 1901. The town was estimated at 9,137 people in 1936 and averaged more than 12,000 from 1950. In 1990 it was a center for farm products and oil, and in 2000 it had 11,660 people.

What the plaque says

Lawyer and World War I veteran, T. Edgar Johnson (1889-1972), gathered resources from family and friends to open Johnson-Davis Ford Company in Vernon in 1930 at this location. The business thrived during the Great Depression, becoming a leading transportation business in the region for thirty years. T. Edgar, his wife, Robbie Laurine (Davis), and their daughter moved here from Breckenridge, where he had been a successful attorney. Johnson served the community as a board member of the Pease River Flood Control District. He was also a longtime board member of the Vernon Chamber of Commerce and its president in 1937, helping the local economy to prosper. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Red River Valley Museum — 2.3 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.
• Doan's Crossing — 13 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.
• Fire Hall Museum — 28 mi
  Crowell's local museum in the 1922 firehouse on Main Street, in a county-seat town that was almost wiped away by the tornado of April 1942 and rebuilt.
• Quanah, Acme and Pacific Depot Museum — 28 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.

More markers nearby

• Early Wilbarger County — steps away
• Wilbarger County — 2.3 mi
• Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, Substation No. 12, Home of Hybrid Sorghums — 14 mi
• Medicine Mound Community — 18 mi