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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.
Forts Trail Heritage Sites and Attractions
Welcome to the Forts Trail Region
Explore the Forts Trail Region
Forts Trail Region
Martin & Francis Lehnis Railroad Museum & Visitor Center
700 East Adams Street Brownwood, TX 76801 (325) 643-6376 Website
Forts Trail Region
McCulloch County Courthouse
199 Courthouse Square Brady, TX 76825 (325) 597-2290 Website
Forts Trail Region
Mills County Courthouse
1011 Fourth Street Goldthwaite, TX 76844 (325) 648-2222 Website
Forts Trail Region
Mills County Historical Museum
1119 Fisher Street Goldthwaite, TX 76844 (325) 648-6212
Forts Trail Region
Mineral Wells Fossil Park
2375 Indian Creek Road Mineral Wells, TX 76067 (940) 328-7803 Website
Forts Trail Region
Miss Hattie’s Bordello Museum
18 ½ East Concho Ave. San Angelo, TX 76903 (325) 653-0112 Website
Forts Trail Region
National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature
102 Cedar Abilene, TX 79601 (325) 673-4586 Website
Forts Trail Region
The National Vietnam War Museum
12685 Mineral Wells Hwy Mineral Wells, TX 76067 940-325-4003 or 940-452-1470 Website
Forts Trail Region
National WASP WWII Museum
210 Avenger Field Rd. Sweetwater, TX 79556 (325) 235-0099 Website
Forts Trail Region
Old Post Office Museum & Art Center
510 Third Street Graham, TX 76450 (940) 549-1470 Website
Forts Trail Region
Paint Rock Indian Pictographs
Highway 83, 16 miles south of Ballinger. Paint Rock, TX 76866 (325) 732-4376
Forts Trail Region
Railway Museum of San Angelo
703 S. Chadbourne St. San Angelo, TX 76903 325-486-2140 (Saturdays 10-4) Website
Forts Trail Region
Reynolds-Seaquist House
400 Broad Street Mason, Texas 76856 (325) 347-4058 Website
Forts Trail Region
Robert E. Howard Museum
625 West Highway 36 Cross Plains, TX 76443 254-725-4993 or 254-725-4174
Forts Trail Region
Robert Wood Johnson Museum of Frontier Medicine
630 S. Oakes St. At Fort Concho National Historic Landmark San Angelo, TX 76903 (325) 481-2646 Website
Forts Trail Region
San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts
1 Love Street San Angelo, TX 76903 (325) 653-3333 Website
Forts Trail Region
San Angelo State Park
3900-2 Mercedes San Angelo, TX 76901 (325) 949-4757 Website
Forts Trail Region
San Saba County Courthouse
500 E Wallace St. San Saba, Texas 76877 (325) 372-3614 Website
Forts Trail Region
San Saba County Historical Museum
271 S. Thomas Stewart Dr. San Saba, TX 76877 Website
Forts Trail Region
Santa Fe Depot and Harvey House
600 East Depot Street Brownwood, TX 76804 (325) 646-9535 Website
Forts Trail Region
Schleicher County Historical Museum
7 W Murchison St Eldorado, TX 76936 (325) 374-2554 Website
Forts Trail Region
Shackelford County Courthouse
225 Main Street Albany, TX 76430 (325) 762-2232 Website
Forts Trail Region
Stephenville Historical House Museum
525 E. Washington Stephenville, TX 76401 (254) 965-5880 Website
Forts Trail Region
Taylor County History Center/Buffalo Gap Historic Village
133 North William Street Buffalo Gap, TX 79508 (325) 572-3365 Website
Forts Trail Region
Terrill Antique Car Museum
500 North Texas Street De Leon, TX 76444 (254) 893-3773
Forts Trail Region
Texas Botanical Gardens and Native American Interpretive Center (Legacy Plaza)
1219 Fisher Street Goldthwaite, Texas 76844 (325) 648-2750 Website
Forts Trail Region
The Mason County Museum
210 Bryan Mason, TX 76856 325-347-5151 or 325-347-1207 Website
Forts Trail Region
Throckmorton County Courthouse
121 N Minter Ave Throckmorton, TX 76483 (940) 849-4411 Website
Forts Trail Region
W.K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas
65258 Interstate 20 Mingus, TX 76463 (254) 968-1886 Website
Forts Trail Region
Woody’s Classic Cars & Baseball Museum
500 SW 5th Street Cross Plains, Texas 76443 (254) 725-4042 Website
Forts Trail Region
Young County Courthouse
516 Fourth Street Graham, Texas 76450 (940) 549-2030 Website
Forts Trail Region
Z.I. Hale Museum / Rock Hotel Heritage Center
242 West Dale Winters, TX 79567 (325) 754-2036 Website
Forts Trail Cities
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Bronte
Get Directions (325) 473-3501It’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…
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Mason
Get Directions (325) 347-5758From 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…
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Menard
Get Directions (325) 396-2365SMALL 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…
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Brady
Get Directions (325) 597-3491MEET 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…
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Abilene
Get Directions (800) 727-7704FRONTIER 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…
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Brownwood
Get Directions (325) 646-9535Walk 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…
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Baird
Get Directions (325) 854-2003Hundreds 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…
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Cisco
Get Directions (254) 442-2537Henry 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…
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Anson
Get Directions (325) 823-2411The 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…
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Dublin
Get Directions (254) 445-3422Dublin 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…
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Eastland
Get Directions (254) 629-2332The 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…
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Eden
Get Directions (325) 869-2211Eden 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…
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Goldthwaite
Get Directions (325) 648-3619Post-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…
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Graham
Get Directions (866) 549-0401WORTH 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…
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Stephenville
Get Directions (254) 965-5313Town 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…
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San Angelo
Get Directions 800-375-1206, 325-655-4136CONCHO 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…
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Albany
Get Directions (325) 762-2525ALBANY 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…
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Cross Plains
Get Directions (254) 725-7251Cross 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…
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Paint Rock
Get Directions (325) 732-4322THE 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…
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Ballinger
Get Directions (325) 365-2333History 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…
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Breckenridge
Get Directions (254) 559-2301When 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…
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Fort Stockton
Get Directions 800-336-2166, 432-336-2264STOCKTON 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…
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Mineral Wells
Get Directions 800-252-6989, 940-325-2557A 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…
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Fort McKavett
Get DirectionsThe 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…
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Jacksboro
Get Directions (940) 567-2602SECOND 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…
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Buffalo Gap
Get DirectionsHigh 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…
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Miles
Get DirectionsMiles, 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…
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Haskell
Get Directions (940) 864-2477In 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…
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Throckmorton
Get Directions (940) 849-0222When 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…
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Santa Anna
Get DirectionsSanta 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…
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Early
Get Directions (325) 649-9300We 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…
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Winters
Get Directions (325) 754-4424Founded 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…
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De Leon
Get Directions (254) 893-2083The 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…
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Comanche
Get Directions (325) 356-3233ONCE 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…
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Coleman
Get Directions (325) 625-2163Most 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…
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Robert Lee
Get DirectionsThe county seat of Coke County, Robert Lee is located at the junction of State highways 158 and 208 north of San Angelo. Robert Lee was founded by two Confederate veterans -…
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Aspermont
Get DirectionsAspermont is at the junction of U.S. highways 83 and 380 and Farm roads 610, 2211, and 1263, fifty-nine miles north of Abilene in central Stonewall County. It was platted as a…
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Stamford
Get Directions (203) 359-4761Stamford may have been named for a city in Connecticut, but this place is all cowboy all the time. It’s been that way since the late 1800s when Swante Magnus Swenson, the…
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Sweetwater
Get Directions 800-658-6757 or 325-235-5488Wide-open spaces and potable water brought Native Americans, buffalo hunters and ranchers to these rolling prairies and plateaus. Sweetwater became the seat of Nolan County in 1881 just as the first railroad…
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Thurber
Get DirectionsIn the early 20th century, a prosperous coal and brick operation made Thurber a thriving city between Fort Worth and El Paso. Owned by the Texas and Pacific Coal Company, the booming…
