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Browse our website for heritage sites and attractions, events, and more. Find things that pique your interest, and click the star icon next to the item. See them in the trip planner by the main menu to view or print them later.
Welcome to the Forts Trail Region
Browse our website for heritage sites and attractions, events, and more. Find things that pique your interest, and click the star icon next to the item. See them in the trip planner by the main menu to view or print them later.
Forts Trail Region
1289 North 2nd Abilene, TX 79601 (325) 677-6515 Website
Forts Trail Region
4276 Dan Hanks Lane San Angelo, TX 76904 (325) 651-4951 Website
Forts Trail Region
212 North Broadway Brownwood, TX 76801 (325) 641-1926 Website
Forts Trail Region
204 North 8th Street Ballinger, TX 76821 (325) 365-3616 Website
Forts Trail Region
Intersection of Hwys 83 and 67 Ballinger, TX 76821 Website
Forts Trail Region
2505 Martin Luther King San Angelo, TX 76903 (325) 653-4936 Website
Forts Trail Region
6031 Colorado Park Road Bend, TX 76824 (325) 628-3240 Website
Forts Trail Region
402 Moorman Comanche, TX 76442 (325) 356-5115 Website
Forts Trail Region
309 Conrad Hilton Avenue Cisco, TX 76437 (254) 442-2537 Website
Forts Trail Region
810 San Antonio St. Mason, Texas 76856 (325) 347-6897 Website
Forts Trail Region
187 West Washington Stephenville, TX 76401 (254) 965-5313 Website
Forts Trail Region
100 E San Saba Ave Chamber of Commerce Menard, TX 76859 (325) 396-2365
Forts Trail Region
116 West Blackjack Dublin, TX 76446 (254) 445-4550 Website
Forts Trail Region
Arnold Boulevard & Military Drive Abilene, TX 79607 (325) 696-2099 Website
Forts Trail Region
630 S. Oakes St Officers' Quarters #4 at Fort Concho San Angelo, TX 76903 (325) 481-2646 Website
Forts Trail Region
114 South Seaman Street Eastland, TX 76448 (254) 631-0437 Website
Forts Trail Region
210 W. White Street Eastland, TX 76448 (254) 629-1774
Forts Trail Region
209 N. W. 6th Street Mineral Wells, TX 76067 (940) 325-8870 Website
Forts Trail Region
630 S. Oakes St. San Angelo, TX 76903 (325) 481-2646 Website
Forts Trail Region
1701 N. US Hwy 283 Albany, TX 76430 (325) 762-3592 Website
Forts Trail Region
7066 FM 864 Fort McKavett, TX 76841 (325) 396-2358 Website
Forts Trail Region
228 State Park Road 61 Jacksboro, TX 76458 (940) 567-3506 Website
Forts Trail Region
1701 South Bridge Brady, TX 76825 (325) 597-1895 Website
Forts Trail Region
117 North High Brady, TX 76825 (325) 597-0526 Website
Forts Trail Region
202 South Oakes Street San Angelo, Texas 76903 (325) 655-6565 Website
Forts Trail Region
2 South Park Street San Angelo, TX 76903 (325) 657-4450 Website
Forts Trail Region
100 N Mail Street Jacksboro, Texas 76458 (940) 567-2663 Website
Forts Trail Region
200 State Highway Park Road 15 Brownwood, TX 76801 (325) 784-5223 Website
Forts Trail Region
100 Park Road 71 Mineral Wells, TX 76067 (940) 328-1171 Website
Forts Trail Region
108 North Lamar Street Eastland, TX 76448 (254) 629-2102 Website
It’s a switch for a frontier town to change its name from Bronco to Bronte (after the English novelist Charlotte Bronte). But Bronte it was for the high-minded cattle ranchers who established…
From Post Hill you look down on the white dome of the Mason County Courthouse, and you look back 150 years. The U.S. Army established Fort Mason here in the 1850s to…
SMALL TOWN, BIG PICTURE The community we know as Menard, with its dense history dating back to the 1700s, mixes plenty of history with legend, keeping history exciting and helping to make…
MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE The Texas Forts Trail community of Brady has served as middle ground for Central Texans since its establishment in the 1870s. Founded halfway between Fort Mason and…
FRONTIER REDUX Abilene owes its county seat to its founding fathers, local ranchers and businessmen who met with H. C. Whithers, the Texas and Pacific Railway townsite locator, for a friendly little…
Walk two blocks from the Classical Revival-style Brown County Courthouse, and you arrive at what looks like an ancient fortress, complete with towers and crenellated limestone walls. Actually it’s the Brown County…
Hundreds of thousands of cattle passed through here along the Western Cattle Trail. A local railhead was established with the arrival of the railroad in 1880, and the site was named for…
Henry Mobley was lucky to build his two-story hotel in 1916. When oil blew in a year later, the Mobley stayed so full it rented rooms in eight-hour shifts. In 1919, a…
The settlement originally at Fort Phantom Hill was relocated to a site that its founders mistakenly thought would be on the Texas and Pacific Railway lines. The town, and later Jones County…
Dublin has been known for a century as home of the world’s first Dr Pepper bottling plant. The family-owned Dublin Bottling Works remains the state’s oldest soda bottling facility, though it no…
The 1920s oil boom is alive and well in Eastland. Completed in 1928 the Art Deco-style Eastland County courthouse remains the well-known home of Old Rip, the horned toad retrieved from the…
Eden gets its name not from a Biblical garden, but from town founder Frederick Ede, a native of England and pioneer ranchman who gave land for the town. The town’s most famous…
Post-Civil War vigilante groups still terrorized locals in the late 1880s when Goldthwaite became the seat of newly-formed Mills County. First order of county business: build a sturdy two-story limestone jail, now…
WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN SALT Graham, Young County seat, built three previous courthouses before finally settling on the 1932 Art Moderne stone and concrete construction in use today. The Young County courthouse…
Town namesake John M. Stephen donated land for the town site, which was laid out by county namesake George B. Erath. Today, downtown Stephenville offers 1890s-era stone buildings surrounding the Romanesque Revival-style…
CONCHO RIVER PEARL San Angelo started out on the right foot for Texas heritage travelers, particularly when it comes to frontier history and early Texas architecture. The townsite, originally a trading post…
ALBANY ARTISTIC Shackelford County’s first permanent jail, located in the county seat of Albany and completed in 1878, served the region’s citizenry for more than half a century. No doubt jailers in…
Cross Plains was named for the crossings of stagecoaches and military roads prior to the Civil War. It is said that Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant camped with their troops at…
THE FRENCH EMPIRE COMES TO TEXAS Established around a mile from the banks of the Concho River, the Texas Fort Trail community of Paint Rock served as site for fording the river…
History bustles in Ballinger with a thriving historic downtown, restored period homes and the 1889 Runnels County Courthouse. Every April the courthouse square—one of the largest in the state—showcases ethnic foods, arts…
When visitors come to admire the 1926 Classical Revival-style Stephens County Courthouse, many are surprised to find a steel oil derrick looming across the street. The non-working rig marks downtown like a…
STOCKTON REST STOP Historic Comanche Springs, once the third largest known source of spring water in Texas but dry by the 1960s due to excessive irrigation pumping, gave rise to Fort Stockton…
A WELL FULL OF MINERALS Mineral Wells founder (and first well digger) J. A. Lynch claimed that drinking and bathing in the local mineral waters cured his “rheumatism”, a 19th century term…
The community of Fort McKavett is at the intersection of Farm roads 864 and 1674, southwest of Menard. Fort McKavett began in the 1850s as a community of civilians associated with a…
SECOND TIME’S A CHARM It took several tries (and several names) to kickstart the Texas Forts Trail community of Jacksboro. A small agrarian colony along the banks of Lost Creek got things…
High hills of the Callahan Divide run for 26 miles just south of Abilene. Centuries of buffalo herds migrated through a gap in the divide. Apache and Comanche followed them there, and…
Miles, on U.S. Highway 67, Farm Road 2872, and the Santa Fe Railroad, in southwestern Runnels County, was named for settler Jonathan Miles, who donated $5,000 for the extension of the railroad…
In West Texas water is life. That’s why reliable springs here attracted 19th century Native Americans and white hunters who followed bison herds across the plains. Army Capt. Randolph Marcy’s expedition stopped…
When you travel U.S. 183 through Throckmorton, think cattle drive. The highway traces the 1870s-1880s route of the Great Western Trail where tough cowboys drove millions of cattle from South Texas, across…
Santa Anna is at the intersection of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, U.S. highways 283, 67, and 84, and Farm Road 1176 eight miles southeast of Coleman in southeast central…
We are strategically located in central Texas, northern tip of Texas Hill Country and about 76 to 150 miles from Abilene, San Angelo, Ft. Worth and Austin Texas. Early has various amenities…
Founded in 1890, the town was named for rancher and land agent J.N. Winters. The Z.I. Hale Museum bears the name of a local optometrist whose office now houses displays on early-day…
The Texas Central Railroad reached the Leon River valley in 1881, enroute to Colorado, and established De Leon to attract Southern cotton farmers to this fertile area. By 1910 the Mexican boll…
ONCE COMANCHE COUNTRY Although the community of Comanche and Comanche County were named for the Native American warriors known for their excellent hunting skills and superb horsemanship, a mere twenty five years…
Most visitors know the high hills, wide-open spaces and many lakes around Coleman as a paradise for hunters and anglers. But the area’s history rekindles the drama of the Old West. Comanche…