Westover

Westover was founded in Baylor County's cotton boom years. Between 1900 and 1910 old ranchland was divided into hundreds of farms, 616 of the county's 1,040 farms were run by tenants by 1910, and the Gulf, Texas and Western reached Seymour that year. The Handbook of Texas says Westover had a school by 1913 and, for a time in the 1920s, an independent district with as many as 175 pupils in a six-room building. Its post office ran until about 1957. The town counted ninety people in 1949, sixty-one in 1970 and eighteen in 2000.

What the plaque says

Westover Platted in 1910 on the gulf, Texas and Western Railroad, Westover developed into a small market center providing goods and services for area farmers and ranchers. J. W. Stevens offered part of his ranchland for the townsite, which was given the maiden name of his mother-in-law. James H.B. Kyle served as first postmaster when the post office was established in 1910. Businesses, including a bank, barbershops, cotton gins and dry goods stores, as well as churches, a school and a cemetery were established to serve area residents. After the commercial area suffered a fire in 1921 and the rail line was abandoned in 1942, many settlers and businesses moved to Seymour. (2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Royal Theater — 23 mi
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.
• Fort Belknap — 28 mi
  The 1851 northern anchor of the first Texas frontier forts, on the Brazos below Newcastle, a Butterfield stop and the post beside the Brazos Reservation until its people were driven out in 1859.

More markers nearby

• St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church — 5.1 mi
• Round Timber Community — 5.7 mi
• Megargel — 5.8 mi
• Edward D. and Mary S. Miller — 14 mi