Town of Bedias

The plaque's "jewels of the moon" came from Earth, not the moon. Geologist Virgil E. Barnes first met them in 1936, when a Bureau of Economic Geology mineral survey of Grimes County, run as a WPA project, turned them up; most people then took them for meteorites. His 1940 paper "North American Tektites" began decades of tektite study, and the Meteoritical Society gave him its Barringer Medal in 1989. In 2006 A. Deutsch and C. Koeberl matched the glass's isotopes to the buried Chesapeake Bay impact structure, about 35 million years old, and named it the source crater.

What the plaque says

Town of Bedias Named for North and South Bedias creeks, which in turn were named for the Bidai Indians, an agricultural people reputed to have been the oldest inhabitants of the area. "Bidai" means "brushwood", which may refer to the building material used in their dwellings. The first white settlement in this vicinity was founded 1835 by Thomas P. Plaster, and for a while it was called Plasterville. In 1903, the community of "Old" Bedias surrendered most of its population to "New" Bedias after a branch of the International & Great Northern Railroad was built to the northeast. Townspeople from Pankey and Cotton also moved here. The name "Bedias" was retained, but only after a heated struggle in which determined citizens refused to have the town named for a railroad official. A famous, early resident of the Bedias area was Sarah Dodson, who in 1835 made the first "Lone Star" flag in Texas. She lived here from 1844 to 1848 and is buried in Old Bethel Cemetery, seven miles west. One of the most unique features of this region is the large number of Tektites (also called "Bediasites") found here. These are beautiful, glassy, meteor-like stones which fell to earth 34 million years ago. Amazingly, Indians called them "jewels of the moon." (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 20 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 27 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.

More markers nearby

• Bedias First Baptist Church — 0.4 mi
• Sarah Bradley Dodson — 3.8 mi
• Lake Grove Community — 8.0 mi
• Katy Holland McDowell Treadwell Cobb — 8.5 mi