Emerald Townsite
N 30° 41.953 W 101° 05.476
14R E 299709 N 3398135
A state historic marker in a trucker's motel complex off the I-10 east of Ozona preserves the memory of Emerald, now a ghost town
Waymark Code: WMTW0A
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 01/12/2017
Views: 2
The state historic marker for the Emerald townsite is located on a brick pillar outside of the motel restaurant at an extremely hard-used truckers motel on Taylor Box Road exit/Crockett Co Rd 108 at the I-10, east of Ozona.
Marker Number: 1471
Marker Text:
(1 Mile North)
The first platted town in Crockett County, Emerald was founded in 1889 by Fort Worth & Rio Grande Railway Immigration Agent T. W. Wilkinson. It was to be an agricultural shipping point on a planned extension of the F.W. & R.G. Publicized from Maine to Minnesota for mild climate and fertile land, it acquired a post office on April 8, 1890. Mail came from San Angelo via Knickerbocker (50 mi. NE). Charles Hatch and E. C. Moore were successive postmasters.
In Aug. 1890 the town was in the path of a prairie fire. Although valiant work turned the fire, it was visible for two nights before and two nights after it circled the town. Also in 1890, the county's first school session was held in a tent in Emerald by Mrs. John Noyes. After a frame schoolhouse was built, Mrs. John Ketchpaw taught there. Miss Ada Williams taught the last school term in the spring of 1893.
Confident it would be the county seat, Emerald nevertheless lost in the election of 1891 to the E. M. Powell water well site (now Ozona). Wilkinson protested, to no avail. After the residents began to move to the Powell Well, Emerald Post Office closed on December 7, 1891. The townsite thus became one of the many colonization failures in West Texas. (1978)
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