Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site

Limestone County Confederate veterans held their first reunion in 1888 at a campmeeting ground where Jack's Creek meets the Navasota River. They had fought for a Confederacy that Texas joined, its 1861 Declaration of Causes says, to keep slavery. In 1889 they formed Joseph E. Johnston Camp No. 94 of the United Confederate Veterans. In 1892 they began buying land, selling more than 100 camping lots at $5 each to veterans and their families.

The reunions ran each July or August at the full moon, with speeches, meals, games, a carnival midway and the firing of the Val Verde cannon. Attendance reached several thousand around 1900. The Handbook dates the octagonal dance pavilion to 1893; the Commission's page describes a 1902 pavilion. In the early 1920s, during the Mexia oil boom, wildcatter A. E. Humphreys secured water rights from the camp and built a pumphouse, houses, a bathhouse and a clubhouse; the Handbook says General John J. Pershing was entertained there.

The reunions faded in the 1940s. Citizens campaigned to save the grounds in the 1960s, and the camp won a new charter in 1965, a state marker in 1966 and a National Register listing in 1976. Parks and Wildlife ran the 77 acres from 1983, and the Historical Commission took over on January 1, 2008. Today the site has the pavilion, the cannon, Colonel's Spring, picnic areas and a trail. It is open Wednesday to Sunday, 8 to 5, without admission.