FIRST -- Platted town in Crockett County, Taylor Box Rd at I-10, nr Ozona TX
N 30° 41.953 W 101° 05.487
14R E 299692 N 3398135
The site of the failed town of Emerald, one mile north of this run down and awful trucker's motel
Waymark Code: WMTW0G
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 01/12/2017
Views: 0
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 from the 1970s on Taylor Box Road exit/Crockett Co Rd 108 at the I-10, east of Ozona.
The historic marker reads as follows:
"EMERALD TOWNSITE
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 miles northeast). Charles Hatch and E. C. Moore were successive postmasters.
In August 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)"
FIRST - Classification Variable: Place or Location
Date of FIRST: 01/01/1889
More Information - Web URL: [Web Link]
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