Weatherford, Mineral Wells and Northwestern Railway

The line's account books show how quickly its trade faded. The Handbook of Texas says the company was chartered on July 2, 1889, and finished twenty-five miles to Mineral Wells in 1891. In 1895 it earned $15,561 from passengers and $38,070 from freight. Texas and Pacific bought it in 1902 and extended it to Graford in 1908. Track beyond Mineral Wells was abandoned in 1936 and 1941. The Missouri Pacific merged it in 1988, Mineral Wells bought it in 1989, and the Mineral Wells and Eastern closed it in May 1992.

What the plaque says

Weatherford, Mineral Wells and Northwestern Railway In 1852, years before the nation's first transcontinental rail line was completed in 1869, the Texas Legislature chartered what would become the Texas & Pacific Railway Company. The Civil War halted progress, but in 1888 the line reached Weatherford in its advance westward to the Pacific coast. The tracks then turned south to avoid the Palo Pinto Hills. This left northwestern Parker County and most of Palo Pinto County without rail support. In the 1880s, Mineral Wells became a resort. A stage line connected it to the railroad at Millsap, but the town's popularity called for a rail connection. Several men, led by W.A. Stone of Missouri, received a charter for the Weatherford, Mineral Wells & Northwestern Railway Company in 1889. The line linked Mineral Wells to Weatherford, which by then was served by the T&P and Santa Fe railroads. The WMW&NWRR established a depot, offices and repair shop in Weatherford. The new line, built largely on land obtained from the Franco-Texan Land Company, included stops at Lemley, Franco, Garner and Rock Creek. On January 1, 1891, a crowd in Mineral Wells greeted the first train's arrival, and by 1899 approximately 33,000 passengers made the trip each year from Weatherford to Mineral Wells. The line also supported freight shipments. T&P eventually acquired the line and extended it to Salesville, Oran and Graford. By the beginning of the 1940s, after decades of highway expansion, the rail line was no longer productive. The advent of World War II and the training of troops at nearby Camp Wolters resurrected the line briefly. It became part of the Missouri Pacific system in 1988 and closed in 1992. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 1.0 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Chandor Gardens — 14 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 29 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Acton State Historic Site — 32 mi
  The smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.

More markers nearby

• Fort Wolters — 1.7 mi
• Jack Llewellyn Knight — 1.8 mi
• Old Camp Wolters — 2.6 mi
• Mineral Wells — 4.5 mi