Wichita County

Before the county took their name, Wichita (now the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes) and Taovaya villages stood in this country. The Handbook of Texas says these Caddoan peoples came from present Kansas and Nebraska in the mid-1700s and, though masters of the horse, depended heavily on farming. Comanche and Lipan Apache bands also claimed the land. The Spanish trader Athanase de Mezieres passed through, Pedro Vial and Jose Mares crossed it in 1786 and 1787 opening routes to Santa Fe, and the Texan Santa Fe expedition came this way in 1841. The first surveys followed in 1854.

What the plaque says

Formed from Young Land District; created February 1, 1858; organized June 21, 1882; named for the Wichita Indians who formerly resided here; county seat, Wichita Falls

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 4.3 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 4.8 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 8.3 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 17 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Bowman Cemetery — 3.6 mi
• Call Field — 3.9 mi
• Wichita Falls Traction Company — 4.0 mi
• Wichita Falls Junior College — 4.1 mi