GO FORTH ALONG INTERSTATE 35 in Hays County to FM 2001 East. Drive four and a half miles to CR 157, turn right and drive another 1.5 miles. Stop.
A sign will tell visitors that they have now gone forth to the ghost town of Goforth, Texas. The town, a farming community, sprang forth in the 1870s – its social center was a general store, but there was also a drugstore, a doctor’s office, a meat market, a stable, a post office and a blacksmith shop – but was abandoned in 1926 due to an apparently large worm infestation.
Gross.
If Hollywood filmmakers ever familiarized themselves with the state’s 13,000 historical markers, “Goforth” may be the next big horror film to hit box offices.
Someone should be working on the pitch right now. Worms. Ghost town. Crazed farmers. It’s “Snakes on a Plane” meets “Arachnaphobia” meets “Village of the Damned.”
Next marker, please.
In Burleson County, at the corner of Avenue H and 8th Street in Somerville, a marker honors 19-year-old Thomas J. Gary, Jr., who enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1940, when he was 18. According to his marker, Gary was stationed in Hawaii. On Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Gary was there, and he helped save the lives of his crewmates before dying and being buried at sea. His bravery and sacrifice earned him the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, a Navy Citation and two Navy ships named in his honor.
The plaque, which sits outside Somerville Middle School, according
to Burleson County Historical Commission Chair Tammy
Kubecka, is just one example of how counties benefit from the marker
program.
“Before the marker, he was totally forgotten. People didn’t know he existed,” Kubecka said. “I think having the marker generates a lot of interest in county history. There are a lot of people out there who drive around in counties just looking for historical markers. The marker program generates tourism and tax dollars … and pride.”
The Texas Historical Marker program first began in the early 1960s, when the Texas State Historical Survey Committee (now the Texas Historical Commission) decided to promote tourism by expanding upon a similar program from the 1930s, when the Texas Centennial Commission placed markers around the state to help celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Texas independence.
The goal of the Historical Marker program when it began seemed to be to mark as much as possible, as soon as possible. Quantity was valued, and the enthusiasm with which Texans placed historical markers on their schools, springs, mills, churches, cemeteries, parks, battle areas and prominent homes quickly made Texas the leader in historical markers.
No other state in the country comes anywhere close to having the number of markers found in Texas. Pennsylvania, New York and Georgia – the states with the next largest historical marker programs – each have fewer than 3,000 markers.
According to a recent report written by the Historical Marker Task Force of the Texas Historical Commission, although the early enthusiasm was heralded, the urgency with which the markers went up also meant that the historical value of many markers was relatively low. While the review process has gradually improved over the last 20 years, task force members wanted to ensure that new historical markers would place more emphasis on the history than on the marking.
“The feeling from here on out is that we need to concentrate on the types of sites that are most important in Texas,” said Task Force chair Shirley Caldwell, a member of the Texas Historical Commission who owns a book and antique store in Albany. “What this is going to do, it’s going to allow for a little tighter review of what is marked. It’s going to force the locals to look closely at their history and come up with historical sites, rather than just going in and marking all the churches.”
The task force was formed in 2005 to address several concerns with the marker program and “develop a strategic master plan,” according to the report. Among other goals, the committee sought to make the program more proactive, increase the communication between the local applicants and the state, quicken the speed of the application process and create a more formal set of standards.
“In recent years, various factors … have effectively worked to slow the marker process considerably, despite internal efforts to maximize efficiency and to ensure better quality of applications,” states the report. “Contributing to the long process are a reliance on old technologies and systems, the lack of clearly defined policies and procedures and the absence of adequate training programs for (County Historical Commissions) and applicants.”
In the old application process, applications were accepted yearround, and most of the communication was done by mail. The marker staff was small, consisting of a part-time historian, a parttime writer and an office manager.
Many applications came in from applicants who were not dedicated to the process and who had no investment in seeing the application through to its conclusion, and those applications tended to have more work associated with them.
“We get around 300 applications a year, and most of those get approved, but we have to do a lot of work to get them approved,” said Dan Utley, the THC’s marker coordinator.
To address the problems, the task force recommended:
In addition, the THC increased the size of the marker staff, hiring two additional historians.
Utley, who has spent the last several months traveling to the county historical commissions to speak about the rule changes, said he’s received only positive feedback from the local chairs.
“People believe that this is going to speed up the process, and they like the fact that we’ll be more proactive in our approach,” Utley said. “We are providing more training and materials online and the counties really appreciate that. … Our goal is to make our website sort of a one-stop shop for local history research.”
Kubecka, the local CHC chair in Burleson County, has spent six years working with the historical marker program. In her experience, she said, the new rules are long overdue.
“One of the things we ran into was, the state tried to be too nice to people. Local people would start nitpicking and nitpicking and nitpicking. We had one application that went on for over a year because they were arguing over the text,” Kubecka said, adding that the more formal procedures should “cut out” those frustrations. “The way they have it set up now, it keeps it on a schedule so it won’t drag out so long.”
Clara Ruddell, the marker chair in Tarrant County, said she also has no problems with the changes to the program.
“Having the new way to do it is just so much more controlled. You know exactly what is expected,” Ruddell said.
Caddo Lake, located between Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana, is the largest natural freshwater lake in the South, and by all accounts, one of the most stunning lakes in the country. Its history includes Old Monterey, an area of the lake known for “its racetrack, rooster fights, saloons and brothels” and having “one violent death” each day, according to its website, www.caddolake.com. The townspeople, fed up with the violence, started a vigilante group called the Regulators, which attempted to police the situation itself; the Regulators became so abusive that a second vigilante group, the Moderators was formed, and a mini-civil war broke out. According to the website, “cannon fire was common.”
But while Caddo Lake is a popular Texas landmark, it’s not one that tourists stopping at the state’s historical markers would discover. Caddo Lake, for all its history, has never had an historical marker attached to it.
“It’s a very scenic, beautiful lake, and it has all kinds of wonderful myths,” said Caldwell, the task force chair. “It’s well-known to Texans and it’s something so obvious – it’s just an oversight by the local people.”
Many of the changes to the historical marker are geared toward making sure sites like Caddo Lake are not overlooked in the future, Caldwell said.
A pre-screening process will help ensure that any applications pertain to historically significant people, places and events, so that money and time won’t be wasted on everybody’s Grandpa.
“You can call members of our staff now before you go through all the research and the writing … and you can clear the subject with them by asking if a certain topic would be a good marker,” Caldwell said. “It’s not that any subject is bad, it’s just a question of whether it’s significant enough to warrant a historical marker. There are lots of people, they get into genealogy and discover Grandpa Jones down at the cemetery. All his relatives get together and decide that he needs a historical marker,” she said, adding that, in the past, Grandpa Jones may have been approved because there was no formal criteria for historical significance, other than age.
Now, the criteria requires that a subject have “influence, effect or impact on the course of history or cultural development.”
“We want the historic markers to be something that is prestigious, well-deserved,” Caldwell said. “Prior to 20 years ago, there were some funny historical markers being put up by the program – a marker for the buffalo and the white rabbit out in West Texas, generic things.
“We don’t want people to stop at a marker and question, ‘well, why in the world would they put a historical marker on that?’ and then even after they stop and read, they are still wondering,” she said.
She added that the new $100 application fee will also help the markers to become more historically accurate.
“We have applications that come in that, for whatever reason, they were rejected and were sent back for further information and the people never get back with the additional information, so the application languishes, and that is expensive. We want some investment up front so the local people will follow through with the application,” Caldwell said, adding that the fee will keep people from filing applications on generic or insignificant topics. “When they have money invested, they will be more prone to follow through or get it right the first time.”
In addition, the fee will go toward the creation of a new fund, which will be used to pay the expenses of marking under-represented points in history. It will still be up to local historical commissions to generate those topics, but churches and cemeteries probably won’t make the cut.
“We got the idea that we could use some money to generate some markers where nothing had ever been done before,” Utley said. “For example, there were no markers for any of the prisoner of war camps out in East Texas, and there are some counties in the state that don’t have (many) markers. We may be able to go to those counties and say, we are able to help pay for the marker if you do the research.”
Marking History Changes to program to emphasize quality over quantity / By Maria Sprow