Blogs from Jacksonville, Texas, United States, North America

I drove North on US Hwy 69 passing through Alto, Rusk and Jacksonville, Texas. On a high ridge just North of Jacksonville I made my first stop at a picnic area and rest stop on the East Side of the highway called Loves Overlook; with a very nice viewing area and rest rooms. In 1904 Wesley Love purchased land there and planted a 600 acre peach orchard. After Wesley died in 1925 his wife donated 22 acres to the State of Texas for a state park. This site turned into a great place for travelers to stop and visit. At the overlook I had a chat with an old local employee of the State of Texas about the exact location of the ghost town of Larissa (my main destination) with negative results. I drove a short ... read more

The Killough Monument (massacre site with historic marker) is a hard to find site on an unmarked road running South of Cherokee County Road 3411. The Issac Killough family was unarmed while harvesting their crops. They were attacked resulting in 18 family members being murdered or carried off. The historic marker (and several internet sites) blamed that massacre on "Indians"; refering to the peaceful East Texas Cherokee Nation. Keep in mind that Cherokee Chief Duwali (AKA Chief Bowles) had a signed treaty in 1836 with Sam Houston (and the Republic of Texas) for permenant exclusive land rites for about three million acres of land including all of Cherokee County. In 1837 the congress of the Republic of Texas nullified the treaty and started issuing land grants to settlers on Cherokee land.Unfortunately Issac Killough did not know ... read more

I wanted to do something fun so I decided to find some ghost towns in Northern Cherokee County, Texas. I drove Texas Hwy 204 into Cherokee County. There was a half mile where Texas Highways 235 & 2274 overlapped where I found the Historic Marker for Lone Star ghost town. Right by the marker was the Lone Star Ranch. I circled around to Cherokee County Road 4601 and found Myrtle Springs Cemetery for the town of Lone Star. The Cemetery is about one mile (as the crow flies) from the Lone Star Historic Marker. According to TexasEscapes.com, the settlement of Skin Tight was established in the 1830s. When the town got a post office in 1883, they changed the name to Lone Star. The town did well with cotton and tomatoes were their primary crops. They ... read more

I was exploring NE Cherokee County and I found on the county map two historic Markers to visit. North of New Summerfield on State Hwy 110 I turned East on county road 4713. I did not know that the intersection is the center of the dispersed community of Blackjack. (The current Blackjack Baptist Church is by that intersection.) The name Blackjack came from the many Blackjack Oak trees there; and the early settlers cut those oak trees to build their log cabins. Maybe a quarter mile on CR 4713 I turned South on Cherokee County Road 4714 (a rough road) to the dead end at the Fitch Cemetery (serving the Blackjack community). Most of the burial stones were from the Fitch family including some current stones. Now a smaller stone caught my attention because it had ... read more

According to Union Pacific Building America, there were only twenty five "Big Boy" Locomotives built exclusively for the Union Pacific (UP) Railroad in the early 1940s. The engine with tender were 132 feet long and weighed 1.2 million pounds. The Big Boys were originally coal burning steam engines, but later converted to #5 oil (diesel) steam boilers. There are seven Big Boys on display with one in Dallas Texas USA. The Big Boy locomotives have a "4-8-8-4" wheel arrangement, with the middle 8-8 wheels being driving wheels. The Big Boys were so large their frames were articulated to keep them from a bad de-rail on the curved railroad tracks. This train took about five days to travel up from Houston, Texas through many railroad towns to Marshall, Texas; then to Little Rock, Arkansas. Today Big Boy ... read more