County of Marker: Texas County
Marker Location: US-63, roadside turnout, in fron of Memorial Hospital, Houston
Marker Erected by: State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission
Date Marker Erected: 1958
Marker Text:
Largest of Missouri's 114 counties, Texas comprises 1,183 sq. miles of Ozark Highland. With the same name as the largest of the 48 states, it exceeds the smallest, Rhode Island, by 125 sq. land miles. When formed in 1843, it was named for the explorer, fur trader, and first Lt. Gov. of Mo. William H. Ashley, but when formally organized, 1845, it was renamed for the Republic of Texas.
A seat of justice for the county was laid out in 1846 near the center of the county on Brushy Creek and named Houston for the first president of the Texas Republic. In the Civil War, the county was ravished by guerrilla warfare and the town was destroyed. Houston's modern development has been as trading center for a dairying, poultry, and livestock farming and lumbering area. The courthouse, built 1932, is the county's sixth.
Rugged hills, springs, and caves abound in Texas County. In the early 1800's William H. Ashley leached saltpeter from bat guano in a cave to the northeast for use in making gunpowder in his factory at Potosi. In 1818, explorer H.R. Schoolcraft visited the cave and named the area Wall-cave Valley.
Pioneers came to the Texas County area in the 1820's from Va., Ky., and Tenn., and set up saw mills along Big Piney River. Part of the county is now Mark Twain National Forest. Roamed by Indians into the 1830's, the area was part of the 1808 Osage Indian land cession. Indian paintings remain upon White Rock Bluffs over an ancient campsite.
In north Texas County is Licking, platted in 1857, and named for a deer and buffalo lick. There was Licking Academy, a noted early school, founded in 1880's. Congressman J.R. Lamar was academy principal in 1889. South is Cabool, laid out 1882, on the route of the Springfield & Memphis (Frisco) R.R., only town in the county on a railroad.
Pioneer educator of the Ozarks, William H. Lynch (1839-1924) was born near Houston. Davis H. Waite later governor of Colorado, taught school in Houston, 1859-60, and John T. White, Mo. Supreme Court Justice in the 1920's, taught here in 1878-79. Confederate Gen. James H. McBride made his home in the county, and on a farm near Houston, Emmett Kelly, creator of the famed circus clown, "Weary Willie," spent his boyhood.