Waller

K. H. Faulkner filed Waller's plat on January 11, 1884, and the public school opened in 1887. By 1897 the town had about 500 people, a newspaper and a bank. Around 1918 a merchant ran what he called the God's Mercy Store, selling goods at cost. Farmers formed a cooperative in the 1920s, and the Boettcher cotton gin served growers until cotton faded in the 1950s. Jim Haney became the first mayor when Waller incorporated in 1947. The town now works as a commuter community, partly in Harris County.

What the plaque says

Waller Extension of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad here about 1857 provided the means for a growing number of settlers in this area to market their farm and ranch products. The town was platted by K.H. Faulkner in 1884 and named Waller for the signer of Texas' Declaration of Independence and Waller County judge Edwin Waller. The village soon boasted a post office , general store, and school, Telephone service arrived in 1912, gas and electric utilities in 1928, and in 1947 the town was incorporated. Waller's steady growth has been sustained by its farm and ranch industry. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 20 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 23 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Navasota — 25 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.

More markers nearby

• South Texas Baptist College — 0.4 mi
• Jacob E. Freeman — 4.3 mi
• Prairie View A&M University — 4.4 mi
• Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery — 4.9 mi