Town of Penelope

Penelope was named for a child, and the Handbook of Texas names her: Penelope Trice, daughter of the railroad's president. Before the International and Great Northern arrived in 1902, the Seley family had set up the Zee Vee Ranch half a mile away, and Anglo and Czech families settled nearby. The Smith Land Improvement Company laid out the townsite beside the tracks, and many Czech families then moved in. Penelope incorporated in 1913 and by the 1920s had about 400 people, a bank, three large gins, a lumber company and a weekly, the Hill County Review.

What the plaque says

Town of Penelope Founded by International and Great Northern Railroad in 1902. Named for child of official. Settled by Anglos and Czechs from Zee Vee, older town (1/2 mile south) founded in 1893. New town prospered; incorporated, 1913. Good well water was found in 1959. Town improvement program began, 1968. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — 16 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.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 23 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 24 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 24 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.

More markers nearby

• Birome — 3.8 mi
• Salem Lutheran Church — 6.7 mi
• First Baptist Church of Mt. Calm — 7.4 mi
• Mt. Calm Methodist Church — 7.5 mi