Wichita Falls Traction Company

The line's best-known destination was Lake Wichita. The Handbook of Texas says the streetcar extension made the lake a recreation center, and a hotel, a domed pavilion, a racetrack, a boardwalk and vacation cottages soon went up there. The lake stayed the city's center of recreation until well after World War I, though the hotel burned in 1918; the abandoned pavilion burned in 1955. The city the cars served was growing fast: Wichita Falls had 5,055 people in 1907, and by 1909 it had thirty miles of sidewalk, five miles of sewers and more than 100 businesses.

What the plaque says

This company, founded by Frank Kell and J. A. Kemp in 1909, played a major role in Wichita Falls growth during the early 20th century. After purchasing undeveloped land between the city limits and Lake Wichita, the company stimulated demand for it by building an electric streetcar system to the area. With the new ease and speed of travel, what formerly had been the city's outskirts became a convenient place to live. The city grew rapidly along the streetcar route and the company profited from its real estate speculation. Buses replaced the streetcars in 1933. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 1.0 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 — 1.6 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 — 12 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 — 19 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

• Kell, Frank — 0.8 mi
• Kemp, Joseph Alexander — 0.9 mi
• Wichita Falls Junior College — 0.9 mi
• First County Officials — 1.3 mi