William Marion Green

Green told the story of his 1874 prisoner run himself, in Frontier Times in 1924. Twelve Rangers rode from Comanche to Austin and on toward Clinton with seven men he called members of the Hardin and Taylor gang. Governor Coke, he recalled, told them to kill the prisoners rather than lose them. A sick Ranger's pistols turned up under two prisoners' pillows. At Clinton a sheriff slipped the prisoners away from a crowd of 200. The Rangers left on Sunday, and the men who had threatened to hang the prisoners did so that night.

What the plaque says

William Marion Green (January 12, 1854 - December 21, 1930) An orphan at age 7, Green learned self-reliance early. At 19, he joined the Texas Rangers. And at 20, he enlisted in Co. A of the Frontier Battalion. In 1874, his company helped capture members of John Wesley Hardin's gang who were raiding Comanche County; Green helped escort 7 of the outlaws to jail. He promoted the founding of the Texas Ex-Rangers Association in 1920, serving as major of the group until his death. Recorded - 1968

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heart of West Texas Museum — 1.4 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• Lake Colorado City State Park — 7.1 mi
  A mesquite-plains park on a lake built in 1949 to cool a power plant, southwest of Colorado City, where controlled burns are bringing back the grassland and 300 bird species pass through.
• Scurry County Museum — 20 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
• National WASP WWII Museum — 22 mi
  Hangar 1 at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, where the women of the WASP trained to fly every aircraft in the Army's arsenal in World War II, then waited thirty-three years to be called veterans.

More markers nearby

• R.C. (Dick) Ware — steps away
• Colorado City Standpipe — 0.6 mi
• Ruddick Park — 0.7 mi
• Comanche Village Massacre — 0.7 mi