Town of Grandview

The Handbook of Texas says J. F. Scurlock opened a general store a mile north of the present site in the 1850s, and John W. Westbrook built the county's first mill, which made the new town a center for area farmers. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas passed within two miles in 1882, and over the next year residents and businesses moved south to be near the line. By the early 1900s the town had a weekly newspaper, more than thirty businesses and a segregated school system, meaning separate schools for Black and White children.

What the plaque says

Town of Grandview (Original Site One Mile Northwest) Settled in 1850 on land grant from Governor Elisha M. Pease. Supplies were hauled by ox wagon from Houston. A visitor exclaimed, "What a grand view!" which gave community its name. Church organized 1853. Post office opened in 1856. Masonic lodge (county's first) founded 1860. Town moved to this site, on Missouri-Kansas-Texas rail line, in 1883. Incorporated in 1891. Home of Grand View Collegiate Institute 1897-1907. Devastating 1920 fire razed 135 homes, schools, churches, and businesses. Town name changed to Grandview (one word) in 1925. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — 18 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 21 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Cleburne State Park — 22 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.

More markers nearby

• Auburn Cemetery — 6.7 mi
• Gathings College — 7.6 mi
• Site of Switzer College — 7.7 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Itasca — 7.8 mi