Townsite of Marie

Marie lies on a county road just south of Farm Road 384, and the Handbook of Texas keeps its record short and exact. Walter C. Bass kept the store and served as first postmaster when the post office opened in 1906. The landowner whose wife gave the place its name appears there as Walter (Buck) Gentry. A school started in 1901 and closed in 1938, and the post office was discontinued in 1941. Around 1940 Marie had twenty people and one store, and in 2000 the population was twelve.

What the plaque says

Townsite of Marie Settlement of this area of Runnels County began at the end of the 19th century. Attracted by the good climate and farmland, Charlie Black (1868-1946) arrived in the area in 1899. Another early settler was Walter Gentry, and when a post office was established in 1906 the community was named in honor of Gentry's wife, Marie. The settlement remained very small, with a few houses, a store, gin, blacksmith shop, and school, which also served for worship services on Sundays. The community gradually disappeared as people moved to larger towns. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Chadbourne — 9.9 mi
  An 1852 infantry post and Butterfield stage station on a Coke County ranch, its fallen stone buildings rebuilt since 1999 by the descendant of the family that has ranched the land since 1877.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 15 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.
• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 18 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.
• Abilene State Park — 29 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.

More markers nearby

• Maverick — 4.3 mi
• Norton — 4.8 mi
• First Baptist Church of Bronte — 5.6 mi
• Site of Old Communities of Mazeland and Wilmeth — 7.2 mi