Historic Johnson County

HISTORIC 

JOHNSON 

COUNTY 

An Illustrated History 

by Eric Dabney 

A publication of the 

Friends of the Johnson County 

Historical Commission

Thank you for your interest in this HPNbooks publication. 

For more information about other HPNbooks publications, or information about 

producing your own book with us, please visit www.hpnbooks.com.

HISTORIC 

JOHNSON 

COUNTY 

An Illustrated History 

by Eric Dabney 

Commissioned by the Friends of the Johnson County Historical Commission 

Historical Publishing Network 

A division of Lammert Incorporated 

San Antonio, Texas

CONTENTS 

3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

4 PROLOGUE 

5 CHAPTER I hallowed ground 

8 CHAPTER II settling the frontier 

13 CHAPTER III on the move 

18 CHAPTER IV life of a county 

23 CHAPTER V the places we call home 

41 TEXAS TIMELINE 

44 BIBLIOGRAPHY/SUGGESTED READING 

45 SHARING THE HERITAGE 

70 SPONSORS 

71 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

First Edition 

Copyright © 2011 Historical Publishing Network 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing 

from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Historical Publishing Network, 11535 Galm Road, Suite 101, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (800) 749-9790. 

ISBN: 9781935377368 

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2011921582 

Historic Johnson County: An Illustrated History 

author: Eric Dabney 

cover design: Ann Murphy 

contributing writers for “Sharing the Heritage”: Joe Goodpasture 

Brenda Thompson 

Historical Publishing Network 

president: Ron Lammert 

project manager: Sydney McNew 

administration: Donna M. Mata 

Melissa G. Quinn 

book sales: Dee Steidle 

production: Colin Hart 

Glenda Tarazon Krouse 

Omar Wright 

Evelyn Hart 

2 ✦ HISTORIC JOHNSON COUNTY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Writing a book is a community project. Therefore, very special thanks go to Ben Hammons, 

curator of collections, and Julie Philips Baker, director/curator of the city of Cleburne’s Layland 

Museum; Danielle Petty, River Rock Bed & Breakfast Cottages in Cleburne; Tim and Cindy Jones; 

historian and columnist Mollie Mims; Dorothy Schwartz and Michael Percifield of Alvarado; Ann 

Murphy and Bob McAlister of Cleburne and the Johnson County Historical Commission; Jim Bailey 

at the Burleson Heritage Foundation Museum; Kim Bollin at the Cleburne Public Library; Charles 

Varner of Grandview; Stephanie Winnett and Lowell Smith, Jr. of the Lowell Smith Ranch in Rio 

Vista; Sam Hardcastle of Godley; Mary Norris in Burleson; Carolyn Cate and Darlene Campbell of 

Cleburne and the Santa Fe Shops; Alfredo Vergel at the Southwestern Adventist University Archives; 

Luelda Robichaux and Kim Wiley of the Cleburne Chamber of Commerce; Wilma Reed; Melvin H. 

Burt of Cleburne, president of the American Historical Railroad Foundation; and Bill Conover. 

Acknowledgments ✦ 3

PROLOGUE 

❖ 

Above: Visitors will notice the 

inlaid tile design that welcomes them 

inside Johnson County’s historic 

courthouse, 2010. 

Below: Old Glory is raised near the 

Johnson County Courthouse. 

COURTESY OF THE LAYLAND MUSEUM. 

“…the past is not merely prologue. It is with us still.” 

– Walter Edgar 

Johnson County is home—home to the wide blue Texas skies that rush brilliant clouds over its 

bustling twenty-first-century towns, historic foothills, serene rivers, and flourishing grasslands. It is 

home to the prehistory of the world as its ground shook with the rumblings of mammoth dinosaurs 

making their way across its hallowed ground, and home to ancient and native families who first 

explored and hunted among its life-sustaining rivers and tended its vegetation. This is the home of 

early and adventurous settlers who found this land to be their land, the place of their dreams, the 

hope of generations to come. It is the place of legend and it is the place of history. It is the fine people 

of many diverse communities brought together by a common past and prepared to take their place 

in the grand history of the future. 

Johnson County was home then and it is home now. This is its story. 


C HAPTER 

HALLOWED GROUND 

I 

The 734 square miles of land that would become twenty-first century Johnson County, Texas have 

held a diverse and unique quality since prehistoric times. The gentle, rolling landscape is situated 

within a distinct North American ecoregion among the continent’s immense Great Plains that is 

known today as the Cross Timbers, a narrow system of grasslands and woodlands which runs from 

southeastern Kansas to central Oklahoma and into central Texas. Within this biologically diverse 

landscape three systems lie within the boundaries of Johnson County—the Grand Prairie, the 

Blackland Prairie, and the Eastern Cross Timbers. 

The Grand Prairie is located along the western half of Johnson County and includes a rich, level 

ground well-suited for agriculture. Cedar and mesquite are plentiful in the region as are wildlife such 

as rabbits, white-tailed deer, squirrels, and coyote. This distinct area also represents the slender portion 

of land that separates the eastern and western regions of the Cross Timbers. 

Nearly a third of Johnson County’s center is encompassed by the more narrow Eastern Cross 

Timbers, a post oak savannah of heavily wooded forest that extends itself from the Red River to near 

Waco. Its ground includes both clay and sandy soil, and is home to a vast wall of trees that seem to 

separate the landscape from the wide open prairie grassland. It was known to Native Americans as 

the “Grand Forest” and early settlers as the “Cast Iron Forest”—the latter a phrase which likely traces 

its origin to famed American author and historian Washington Irving, who in the 1830s described 

the sight as “like struggling through forests of cast iron." 

Author and naturalist Josiah Gregg wrote of the region, “The Underwood is so matted in many 

places with grapevines, green-briars, etc., as to form almost impenetrable ‘roughs,’ which serve as 

hiding-places for wild beasts, as well as wild Indians; and would, in savage warfare, prove almost as 

formidable as the hammocks of Florida.” Though this seemingly impenetrable environment once 

made travel difficult for explorers, the wealth of timber would beckon pioneers to settle the area in 

the decades to come. 

The western portion of Johnson County is primarily nestled within the legendary Blackland Prairie 

of Texas. With its deep clay and alkaline soil, today the land is well-suited to crop production and 

❖ 

This mammoth tusk was found in a 

creek bed near Cleburne in 1981 and 

is now included in the outstanding 

collection of artifacts located in the 

First Peoples Gallery at the Layland 

Museum in Cleburne. 


Chapter I ✦ 5

❖ 

Above: The Layland Museum is 

housed in the historic Carnegie 

Library building in Cleburne and 

offers visitors a one-of-a-kind look 

into the world of homelife throughout 

Texas history. The museum’s unique 

First Peoples Gallery includes this 

bison-hide tipi – the shelter home of 

Great Plains nomadic people. 


Top, right: The massive American 

Bison inhabited much of the Johnson 

County area into the nineteenth 

century. The Buffalo Creek 

Association commemorated its 

legendary presence in the area with 

this statue along Buffalo Creek in 

Cleburne in 2005. 

PHOTO BY SHELLEY DABNEY. 

flourishes with small grain, cotton, and grain 

sorghum fields. Originally formed by large scale 

fires and thousands of grazing bison that roamed 

across the area, today the region completes part 

of the eastern border of the Cross Timbers and is 

a historically important ecosystem in itself. 

The beautiful landscapes of the county surely 

seemed an ocean of lush, green tall grasses and 

colorful native wildflowers to the first Spanish 

explorers and native inhabitants, which included 

tribes such as the Wacos, Kickapoos, Tonkawas, 

Caddos and Anadarkos who often hunted the 

area’s rich wildlife. Though no permanent Native 

American settlements have been located in the 

county, the many nomadic tribes that found their 

way across North Central Texas knew this land 

and its plentiful water sources well. 

The Brazos River, running along the southwestern 

border of the county, is the longest river 

in Texas and stretches from New Mexico to the 

Gulf of Mexico. Caddo Indians first called the 

river Tokonohono, while its complete name, Los 

Brazos de Dios or “the arms of God,” reflects the 

oasis that it would become to travelers searching 

for fresh drinking water for their families. 

The Brazos meets the county’s most notable 

waterway, the Nolan River, which flows north to 

south along the central portion of the county. The 

river takes its name from Irish native and legendary 

figure Philip Nolan, a mustanger accused 

by Spanish officials of entering Spanish Texas 

under clandestine circumstances. After an order 

was issued for his arrest by Governor El Guezabel 

in 1800, Nolan was killed and his men were captured 

in the area in March of 1801. In 1954 a 

granite monument memorializing the incident 

was erected a few miles south of Rio Vista along 

Highway 174. Historians believe that Nolan was 

among the first notable Anglo-Americans to 

explore Texas and map the territory, and was the 

first among many to eventually secure freedom 

for Texas from Mexican and Spanish rule. 

The area is also rich with smaller streams such 

as Chambers, Mountain, Village, Mustang, and 

Valley Creeks. Buffalo Creek was named to commemorate 

the large herds of American Bison that 

once roamed through the county and often 

watered at the creek. The creek, fed by many 

springs, also made it a “social gathering place” 

for Native Americans and early settlers and 

quickly became the primary water supply for the 

area. By the time the earliest pioneers entered the 

Below: Travelers slowly make their 

way across the Brazos River Bridge 

between Cleburne and Glen Rose 

after its opening in the early 1900s. 



area in the mid-nineteenth century, it was reported 

that wild antelope, deer, wolves, and mustang 

ponies populated much of the land. 

The earliest expedition into the county may 

have first been made by Spanish explorer Luis 

de Moscoso Alvarado, who had succeeded 

Hernando De Soto upon his death in Arkansas 

during a landmark exploration of the southeastern 

portion of the continent in the 1500s. It is 

believed that the army of some 600 men under 

Alvarado entered the area in the summer of 

1542. Other explorers making their way 

through the area included French pathfinder 

Pedro (Pierre) Vial, an Indian interpreter and 

agent who explored a vast portion of land 

stretching across Texas and from Natchitoches, 

Louisiana to St. Louis, Missouri, and Santa Fe, 

New Mexico, in the late 1700s. 

No permanent family settlements were made 

in the area until after colonization began across 

central Texas in the 1830s and 1840s with contracts 

made through the Texas Association and 

ultimately the Nashville Company for groups 

such as the Robertson Colony, Peters Colony, 

and Mercer Colony, all of which would ultimately 

include Johnson County in its grants to 

early pioneering families. 

Initial settlements between 1847 and 1849 

included an Indian trading post, Fort Spunky, 

established by Connecticut native and U.S. 

Indian Commissioner Charles E. Barnard 

(1823-1900) and his brother, George, along the 

Brazos River near Comanche Peak in what was 

eventually cut into Hood County. The brothers 

were pioneer Indian traders across the frontier 

and acquired much of the land surrounding the 

area, including the community of George’s 

Crossing, a settlement established near the trading 

post in the 1850s. 

Soon the first family of Johnson County 

would stake their claim in the ever-expanding 

north central frontier of Texas. 

❖ 

Top: Johnson County includes many 

scenic vistas, one of which is the 

famous Klondike Ranch that sits along 

the Brazos River. Dr. Tom Childers 

purchased one thousand acres here in 

the late 1800s and built a rock home 

that served as a weekend getaway for 

family and visitors to the area. The 

landscape is enhanced by the beauty 

of Comanche Springs, Fern Cave, and 

Ham Creek. 


Middle: The beautification of historic 

Buffalo Creek first began in 1934 with 

the building of rock walls and dams. 

In the twenty-first century, landscaped 

sidewalks and parks lie along its 

banks as it meanders through the city 

of Cleburne. 


Bottom: Livestock was listed as the 

“primary industry” of Johnson County 

as early as the first federal census to 

include the area in 1860. Cattle 

shipping along the new railways in the 

area was also big business. Here cattle 

rancher R.E. “Bob” Gatewood leads 

his herd as they pass near the family 

home. Well over a century later at the 

federal census in 2000, dairy and beef 

cattle production remains profitable. 


Chapter I ✦ 7

C HAPTER 

SETTLING THE FRONTIER 

II 

❖ 

Recorded as an official historic 

landmark by the state of Texas in 

1975, the Briden cabin at Rio Vista 

was later used as a barn when the 

family built a larger home nearby. 

The cabin, pictured here in 2010, was 

restored by the Johnson County 

Historical Survey Committee in 1974 

and placed on permanent display 

near the historic First State Bank in 

Rio Vista, where it remains a famous 

Johnson County landmark in the 

twenty-first century. The one-room 

cabin includes a fireplace, two 

windows and a covered front porch. 

PHOTO BY ERIC DABNEY. 

Texas Ranger and German native Henry Briden (1825-1908), the county’s earliest permanent 

white settler, arrived by wagon with his wife Lucinda (1831-1875), her father Charles Sevier, a land 

surveyor and Henry’s employer, and uncle, A. G. Sevier, to settle a large and beautiful parcel of land 

near present-day Rio Vista along the east bank of the Nolan River in July of 1849. Here Briden 

proclaimed the area as the “winter garden of the world” and found springs plentiful for supplying 

household water as well as water for livestock, and constructed a modest one-room log cabin structure 

of about sixteen square feet. 

As the only white settlers in the area, soldiers from Fort Graham and Fort Worth warned the 

Bridens of skirmishes with nearby Native American tribes and suggested they move to a safer location. 

The family settled for a time near Fort Graham before returning to the cabin, which had 

remained unharmed, and later built a larger home along the west bank of the river and closer to the 

protective forest that bordered the land. Henry Briden lived along the banks of the Nolan until 1900, 

when he moved one mile west of the homestead and built his final home in the area in July of 1907. 

With permanent settlers now populating the land, the area that would first become Johnson 

County was formed by an act of the Fifth Texas Legislature in 1854 from Ellis, Navarro, and Hill 

Counties and included approximately seven hundred people. Major Elbert M. Heath, who had come 

to the area in December of 1852 and led the first petition to create the county, was appointed by the 

Legislature to organize the county and serve as its Commissioner. 107 voters signed the petition to 

form Johnson County and it officially debuted on February 13, 1854. 

The county was defined in the act as “all that portion of territory lying west of Ellis County and 

north of Hill County and south of Tarrant County…running due west to the bank of the Brazos 

River…that the citizens of said county of Johnson shall be entitled to all privileges, right and immunities 

enjoyed by the citizens of other counties of this State…that the first Monday in April, eighteen 

hundred and fifty-four, be set apart as the day for electing county officers…[and] that William Balch, 

William Hunter, Archibald Robinsons, A.D. Kinnard, and Reverend Simeon Odom, be and they are 

hereby appointed Commissioners to select three suitable places to be voted for the county seat.” 


By August of 1855, Johnson County residents 

had chosen its first county seat to be 

established at Wardville, an 80-acre section of 

land located five miles west of present-day 

Cleburne. It was donated by William O’Neal 

and named for Thomas William Ward (1807- 

1872), a Republic of Texas soldier and the second 

Commissioner of the General Land Office 

of Texas. Public roads were established from 

Wardville to Alvarado, the county’s oldest town, 

and between Milford in Ellis County and Fort 

Graham near present-day Hillsboro. 

When it was discovered in 1856 that the 

Texas Constitution required a county seat to be 

located within five miles of the center of the 

county, the town was abandoned and the seat 

moved to Buchanan, a site originally known as 

Bailey’s Place. 

Buchanan was named for U.S. President 

James Buchanan and was soon a flourishing 

town a few miles northwest of present-day 

Cleburne. Upon completion of a log courthouse 

at the site, the first county court was held in the 

Wardville Courthouse, a log cabin, in 1854, 

while the first county jail opened at a cost of 

$795. A two-story courthouse was ordered to be 

built in 1860 while a tax levy providing arms 

and ammunition for defense was organized as 

the Johnson County Cavalry in June of 1861. 

The cavalry formed companies in outlying 

towns and included the Rock Creek Guards, the 

Grandview Cavalry, Stockton Cavalry, and 

Alvarado Cavalry. 

Johnson County was named in honor of 

Texas Confederate war veteran Colonel 

Middleton Tate Johnson (1810-1866). Johnson 

was a native of South Carolina and served in the 

Alabama legislature before coming to Texas with 

his wife in 1839-40. Here he became a captain 

in the Moderator-Regulator War, served as a 

member of the Congress and Senate, and was a 

Texas Mounted Volunteer and Texas Ranger on 

the northern frontier. 

In 1849, Johnson established an outpost and 

fort at Trinity River and named it Fort Worth. 

After serving the United States in the war over 

territory against Mexico, he received a large land 

grant and established a flourishing cotton plantation. 

As the Civil War loomed across the country, 

Johnson was a member of the Secession 

Convention that voted to secede from the Union 

in 1861 and was responsible for raising the 

Fourteenth Texas Cavalry Regiment. After the 

war he was elected to the state’s Reconstruction 

Convention in 1865 and died while returning to 

the family plantation at Johnson Station, presentday 

Arlington, in 1866. 

❖ 

Above: A monument marks the 

path of Old Wardville Road at 

the Chisholm Trail Outdoor 

Museum, 2010. 


Below: Historic landmarks dot the 

land near old Wardville and include 

the retrieved, original first Johnson 

County Courthouse, now relocated 

near the site where it was built in 

1854. It was donated to the site by 

C. R. Shaw in 2003. 


Chapter II ✦ 9

❖ 

Above: The Buchanan Cemetery was 

restored by Terry’s Texas Rangers 

SCV Camp No. 1937 in Cleburne, 

Texas, in 2004. 

COURTESY OF M. H. BURT. 

Top, right: The Confederate Memorial 

of the War Between the States stands 

at the corner of the Johnson County 

Courthouse. 

PHOTO BY JULIA DABNEY. 

Below: The plantation cemetery and 

memorial commemorating the life of 

Col. Middleton Johnson lies in 

Arlington, Texas, 2010. 


The Civil War and its impact upon Johnson 

County was clearly realized when it voted 500 to 

50 to secede from the Union in 1861. The first 

federal census to include Johnson County had just 

the year before numbered the population at over 

four thousand and livestock as the primary 

industry. The decade would prove to be a 

harrowing reality for the country as families bid 

farewell to their husbands, fathers, brothers, and 

sons, and were left to tend the fields and support 

the young pioneer homesteads that now dotted 

the land. As the Civil War ended in 1865 and men 

returned to their homes and families, Johnson 

County began a surge in population that would 

flourish to nearly eighteen thousand by 1880. 

By 1866 Johnson County’s size had been 

reduced by a shift in territory that moved sections 

of it into newly formed Hood County, so a new site 

was once again required to centralize the county 

seat. A special election was held on March 23, 

1867, and voters decided upon Camp Henderson 

as their new county seat. The area was near an 

early-day wagon trail between Fort Belknap and 

Fort Graham and originally sprang to life when 

temporary quarters were established there by 

Johnson County soldiers preparing to leave for 

service in the Civil War. After the site was chosen 

for its abundant water supply along the banks of 

East and West Buffalo Creek, former Kentucky 

volunteer during the Texas Revolution and the 

area’s largest landowner and a renowned politician, 

Colonel B. J. Chambers (1817-1895) joined Civil 

War hero and close friend Colonel W. F. Henderson 

in offering large sections of each of their farm lands 

and Camp Henderson was formed. 

The site had already become home to a few 

merchants and settlers who had established 

cabins and mercantile stores for cowboys driving 

large herds of cattle through the area’s plush 

grasslands and good water supply on their way to 

the nearby Chisholm Trail. 


On July 4, 1867, citizens of Camp 

Henderson and the surrounding towns met for 

the annual 4th of July celebration picnic. State 

Representative Samuel Graham suggested that 

the flourishing town be renamed Cleburne to 

honor the former Civil War Commander and 

hero General Patrick Cleburne. The General 

had influenced many of the local men who had 

only recently returned from service in the war 

and were excited to place such an honor upon 

their legendary leader. And Cleburne, Texas, 

was born. 

As citizens of the county transformed 

Cleburne into its new county seat, the city 

began to take on a life of its own. N. H. Cook, 

regarded as Cleburne’s first settler, built a home 

near the square and opened a mercantile shop. 

Josephine Wren established a log cabin boarding 

house in the area; Joseph Shaw ran one of the 

bustling town’s popular ten-pin alleys and 

saloons; and Colonel B. J. Chambers built The 

Hamilton House hotel to include twenty-five 

rooms and office space. Colonel John Schaffer 

operated the local saw mill and B. S. Greenshaw 

served as the city’s postmaster. A public square 

was formed and streets were laid for a half-mile 

to its north, south, east and west. 

The second courthouse was moved from 

Buchanan to Cleburne and was followed by the 

creation of a two-story brick building completed 

on the town square in 1869. The building was 

razed in 1882 and an ornate courthouse, 

designed by W. C. Dodson included a bell and 

clock tower and was opened on October 6, 1883. 

After the building was destroyed by fire in 

April of 1912, city leaders chose German-born 

Otto Lang and Welshman Frank Witchell, who 

had been inspired by the genius of Frank Lloyd 

Wright and Louis Sullivan, to create their 

“prairie school” architectural style in the design 

of the new courthouse. It was completed on 

November 28, 1913, to include massive Greek 

columns, a six-story atrium, a prominent clock 

tower, and a signature stained art glass dome. 

❖ 

Top, left: General Patrick Ronayne 

Cleburne was born in Ireland in 

1828. He studied medicine before 

enlisting in the British Army and 

serving for several years before he 

made his way to America. He settled 

in Arkansas and joined the 

Confederate Army of the Civil War. 

He quickly rose in rank from private 

to captain, then colonel of the 1st 

Arkansas, then brigadier general, and 

finally major general. Cleburne was 

severely wounded in a battle at 

Richmond but recovered to participate 

in battles at Perryville, Murfreesboro, 

and Ringgold Gap in Georgia. 

Cleburne was killed in action during a 

battle with Union forces at Franklin, 

Tennessee, on November 30, 1864. 


Top, right: General Patrick Cleburne’s 

original pistol is now housed at the 

Layland Museum. 


Bottom, left: A massive cattle drive 

crosses the county. 


Below: Civil War veterans gather for 

an early reunion in Alvarado. 

COURTESY OF MIKE PERCIFIELD. 

Chapter II ✦ 11

❖ 

Clockwise from top, left: 

Envisioned by bricklayer Billy Cate, 

the grand Chisholm Trail monument 

was built by Cate, Jimmy Jones, and 

Ronnie Gossett and stands along the 

highway near Cleburne at the 

Chisholm Trail Outdoor Museum at 

Lake Pat Cleburne. 


This marker stands outside the 

Carnegie Library building, current 

home of the City of Cleburne’s 

Layland Museum, and commemorates 

the area in which Camp Henderson 

was established during the Civil War. 


Cleburne’s City Spring in 2009. It was 

originally “Buffalo Spring,” the site of 

Camp Henderson during the War 

Between the States. 

One of Johnson County’s early 

businesses, The Cleburne Ice and 

Cold Storage Company, was 

organized in 1881. 


The Johnson County jail was built in 

1884 for $26,000 and served at its 

location on South Mill Street in 

Cleburne for over fifty years. 


The Wells Fargo Express stands 

outside Dodson’s majestic 1883 

Johnson County Courthouse. 


The Johnson County Courthouse in 

2010. The courthouse was entered 

into the National Register of Historic 

Places in 1988. 


The Cleburne home of Colonel 

Barzialli Jefferson Chambers. 

COURTESY OF THE CLEBURNE PUBLIC LIBRARY. 


C HAPTER 

III 

ON THE MOVE 

The intertwining life of the railroad with the lives of Johnson County citizens is historic in proportion 

and has become deeply imbedded in its fabric. On any given night well into the twenty-first 

century, townspeople continue to hear the same four short horn blasts of the train as it breaks 

through the evening silence. 

At the county’s centennial celebration in 1954, columnist Jack Proctor wrote, 

With the construction [of the depot], Cleburne became the hub of the Santa Fe serving this area – with 

spokes or branches radiating to Fort Worth and Dallas, to Temple and thence on to Galveston…As many 

as a dozen trains ran in and out of the town not so long ago…. The Santa Fe is the only train coming into 

Cleburne now and what a train it is. Its sleek, streamlined Texas Chief, which went into operation in 1948, 

whizzes in to the station, the same depot which served the Santa Fe back in the 1880s twice daily on its 

19-hour schedule between Galveston and Chicago. Two other local passenger trains traverse the same line 

daily and many long freights pull through the yards here each day. 

❖ 

During the celebration of Johnson 

County’s centennial anniversary in 

1954 the Cyrus K. Holliday Santa 

Fe Engine and early passenger cars 

visited Cleburne. The photo shows the 

famous reenactment of a train 

robbery by cowboy bandits that was 

staged as part of the celebration. 

COURTESY OF JACK CARLTON. 

The first tracks laid in Johnson County came by way of the International and Great Northern 

Railway through the eastern edge of the county in Venus in 1854, while the Chicago Texas and 

Mexican Central tracks had been laid from Dallas to near Cleburne around 1881. The Gulf Colorado 

and Santa Fe purchased the Cleburne link on June 6, 1882, in order to complete a track that would 

run from Galveston through Temple and into Forth Worth, where it would finally connect with its 

major line—the powerful Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe. 

By 1899 the Santa Fe Railway had established its Texas and Oklahoma machine shops and 

mechanical headquarters in Cleburne, the largest of its kind west of the Mississippi, and the town 

was set to become one of the four major maintenance facilities constructed by the line. Employing 

between 800 and 1,000 people, the town boomed in population as eager families made their way to 

Chapter III ✦ 13

❖ 

Above: The Santa Fe Depot at 

Cleburne, regarded as one of the finest 

of its kind along the line, became a 

center of activity for many in the 

county and was also home to one of 

the famous Harvey House 

Lunchrooms, founded by Fred Harvey 

to “serve weary travelers gourmet 

meals in thirty minutes.” The depot 

was remodeled and its second story 

dismantled when the Santa Fe 

division offices were moved to Fort 

Worth in the mid-1900s. 

COURTESY LAYLAND MUSEUM. 

Below: The train depot in Venus. 

COURTESY LAYLAND MUSEUM. 

the area to work for the system as car builders, 

repairman, linemen, and railroad machinists. 

Historian Ed Guinn estimated that by 1904 

“more than 7,000 of the almost 13,000 inhabitants 

of the town were directly dependent upon 

the Santa Fe for their livelihood. As a dividing 

line between the major cities of Chicago and 

Galveston, Cleburne would remain an important 

stop along the Santa Fe Gulf line. 

The shops included a large number of buildings, 

yards, storage, rail salvage and holding 

grounds with a central roundhouse and sixty-foot 

turntable, machine shop, boiler shop, wood 

shop, coach shop, paint shop, car repair shed, 

powerhouse, stack, pattern shop, storehouse, and 

an office for the superintendent of machinery. 

The roundhouse was expanded in 1908 and 

included an eighty-five-foot turntable, as well as 

new shops for those working in coach, paint, 

and woodworking. A planing mill and dry kiln 

were added in 1914, an air brake shop in 1918, 

blacksmith and babbitt shops in the mid-to-late 

1920s, a powerhouse in 1929, a frame and concrete 

sandhouse in 1946, and a new 120-foot 

turntable in 1946. The transfer from steam to 

electric locomotives was realized when the first 

regular diesel freight service entered Cleburne 

on August 30, 1945, and construction of the 

site’s specialized diesel servicing facilities 

extended from 1946 to 1948. 

Darlene Campbell began her employment 

with the Santa Fe Shops in 1951. A friend had 

told her that she should apply for a job, and she 

was hired within a week. When the foreman 

took her to the offices located upstairs in the 

locomotive repair facility, a longtime veteran 

employee asked if she had ever worked for the 

railroad. She replied, “No.” The old man muttered, 

“She’ll never make it here.” 

Thirty-seven years later Darlene retired in 

1988 as the assistant to the superintendent. 

Most of her career was spent in the main office 

located in what was affectionately referred to as 

“The Red Brick.” As usual, it was a family affair 

with her husband, J. B., working in the shops as 

a sheet metal worker, while their son Mike 

served as a machinist and their daughter 

Rhonda was a lab technician. Looking back over 

nearly a half-century with the railroad Darlene 

says, “It is all so nostalgic to me now. I know 

change always comes…it did then and it does 

now. There was such a family atmosphere there 

and we were all very close.” 

The close relationship that existed between 

the town and the railway would herald the 

beginning of a new economy throughout the 

area. Early railroads that made their way into 

the county included the Boll Weevil or the 

“Turnip and Bean Vine” along the Trinity and 


Brazos Valley line, which ran from Cleburne to 

Hillsboro and Mexia in 1903, and The Missouri, 

Kansas, and Texas Railway. Better known as the 

Katy, the M.K. & T. line operated across the 

southwestern United States from San Antonio to 

St. Louis and all points in between and included 

a branch that ran through Lillian and Keene into 

Cleburne, and maintained stations in Burleson, 

Alvarado, and Grandview into the 1950s. 

Through the twentieth century, prestigious 

named trains such as the Meteor, Katy Flyer, 

Texas Special, Kansas Citian, Ranger, and the 

superlative Texas Chief streamlined their way 

across all parts of Texas and continued to open 

the entire area to vast industrial and agricultural 

outlets and allowed businesses and families to 

make their way into the flourishing villages of 

Johnson County. One of the earliest in the area, 

the Nancy Hanks, ran the line in 1887 and was 

named after a famous racehorse from Godley. 

The DC, also known as Old Betsy, ran along the 

short-lived Dallas, Cleburne, and Southwestern 

Railway in the mid-1920s. 

After a century of life in Cleburne and Johnson 

County, the Santa Fe shops closed in 1989 and 

became the railcar repair and refurbishment plant 

of Gunderson Southwest, Inc., in 1992. 

Office personnel Carolyn Cate, Betty Connors, 

Carolyn Nickels, Debby Brunner, past Superintendent 

Louis Sanchez, and Superintendent W. 

H. Hodge were present in the main business 

office of the Shops at the Running Repair Facility 

on the last day of operations. 

For Carolyn Cate, it was a bittersweet day 

that would end a lifetime of fond memories with 

the railroad. She was only four when her family 

moved to Cleburne and her father, R. B. Hutson, 

began working in the shops in 1948. Most of the 

men lived close to the shops, and R. B. would 

often join his friend, R. L. “Killer” Wallace, on 

the morning walk through the “hole in the 

wall.” Four brothers joined R. B. while his son, 

Gary, later became an engineer. 

For nearly a half-century after that, the shops 

would remain as they always had—not merely a 

business or just a place to work, but something 

of a second home to generations of family and 

friends. Thus it was with a nostalgic sigh that 

❖ 

Top, left: The life of the Santa Fe 

shops, where countless engines and 

cars were built and repaired, began in 

Johnson County in the 1880s and 

would extend throughout the coming 

century. Cleburne’s Santa Fe 

Elementary School was located in the 

same neighborhood as the entrance to 

the shops and was fully operational 

until 2007 when a new school was 

built further east off Highway 67/East 

Henderson Street. 

COURTESY OF THE LAYLAND MUSEUM. TEXT 

COURTESY OF ANN MURPHY. 

Top, right: This replica of the original 

Santa Fe shops’ whistle was donated 

by Jack Carlton in 2001 and was 

made by Don Lindsey in 1992. 

During the life of the Shops, the nonoperating 

craft reported for work and 

left through the East Gate to the 

sound of “the whistle.” Nearly the 

entire town kept time to the sound of 

the whistle, which blew several times 

each day, and continued to blow 

for several years after the Shops 

were closed. 

PHOTO COURTESY OF JACK CARLTON. TEXT 

COURTESY OF ANN MURPHY 

Bottom, left: A. F. Burt and his sons, 

C. L. Burt (left) and M. H. Burt 

(right), gathered for this photo at the 

machine shop in 1971. Many families 

would follow grandfather and father 

into the railroad system. 


Bottom, right: Engineer Ralph Bowers 

sits in the conductor’s seat of a freight 

train leaving Cleburne in 1980. 

Employees of the Shops were referred 

to as “non-operating” or “shop craft,” 

while those who rode the trains were 

known as “operating craft” or 

“train crews.” 

COURTESY OF THE MURHPY FAMILY. 

Chapter III ✦ 15

Carolyn Cates turned out the lights at 8 p.m. on 

September 29, 1989, and the Santa Fe shops 

became a hallowed memory. 

Another of the important first steps in the 

county’s growth in the early part of the 1900s 

came again through the emerging 

transportation needs and inventions of the era. 

Among its most influential was the advent of an 

early day mode of transportation that would 

❖ 

Above: An aerial view of the Santa Fe 

Shops in Cleburne. 

Top, right: The growth of the 

economy in Johnson County 

flourished with the creation of the 

Santa Fe shops in Cleburne. 


Right: Restored to its original 

grandeur, Express Car #330, the only 

surviving car of the original Fort 

Worth to Cleburne Interurban Line, 

now stands beside the original depot 

station at Ellison Street in downtown 

Burleson. It was found by John Myers 

on a ranch near Fort Worth in the 

1990s and was donated to the 

Burleson Heritage Foundation 

in 2002. 

PHOTO BY EMILY DABNEY. 


❖ 


make its way along “street railways” and 

become best known as the Interurban. 

In 1900 the Northern Texas Traction 

Company began to run its “big, swift-moving” 

interurban cars between Fort Worth and Dallas. 

By 1911 the company was considering a new 

southern route from Fort Worth that would 

create a line to Cleburne through Burleson and 

Joshua. The Forth Worth Southern Traction 

Company was formed and over three hundred 

men began construction on the project on 

September 22, 1911. The thirty-mile line, 

known as the Cleburne Division, was officially 

opened for business on September 1, 1912, 

and heralded a new era of growth and 

transportation in Johnson County. 

By 1914 The Forth Worth Southern had 

changed its name to the Tarrant County 

Traction Company and interurban service 

continued to flourish along the Cleburne 

Division. Five cars, “The Pioneer Locals,” were 

remodeled in 1926 and were greeted with much 

fanfare. One major advertisement for the new 

According to the Santa Fe records, the 

1906 Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe 

Passenger Depot at Alvarado was 

originally 24 feet by 128 feet, a 

standard combination passenger and 

freight depot. As the freight and 

passenger business dropped off during 

the 1950s, the Santa Fe downsized 

the depot by cutting off the freight 

facility and sold it to T. Wesley Hook, 

to be renovated into two residences. 

PHOTO AND CAPTION COURTESY OF 

MICHAEL PERCIFIELD. 

Oren Jones is seen with the Cooper 

sisters—(from left to right) Adella, 

Bertie, Cossie, Vera, and Maude—in 

front of the depot at Rio Vista in 1913. 

COURTESY OF THE SMITH FAMILY ARCHIVES. 

Brakeman Jack Harwell relaxes in the 

old “yard office”, where crews would 

gather before boarding their train. 

COURTESY OF THE MURPHY FAMILY. 

A moment captured in time: “This 

run was made by me, Hollis Brown 

Joslin, to Gainsville from Cleburne, 

November 23, 1979, on train 503 W 

6 at 10:30 a.m. arriving at Gainsville 

5:15 p.m. I was engineer and 

conductor was A. G. Nickell.” 

COURTESY OF THE JOSLIN FAMILY. 

The old Santa Fe caboose near the 

Cleburne Depot, as a new Burlington 

Northern Santa Fe engine passes 

nearby in November 2009. 


Joe Girard, the “Santa Fe Santa,” was 

the oldest active engineer of the Santa 

Fe Railroad System. Every Christmas 

Eve he delivered gifts to children along 

the run from Cleburne to Purcell, 

Oklahoma. Upon Girard’s retirement in 

1943, others, including Gene Murphy 

and Joe Cottle carried on the tradition. 


Chapter III ✦ 17

❖ 


One of the county’s most vivid 

memories of massive train engines that 

pulled passengers and freight in and 

out of towns across the country was 

the formidable Texas Chief. A star of 

the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe 

Railway, the Texas Chief was 

inaugurated as a coach and Pullman 

train on April 3, 1948. 

COURTESY OF THE DANIELLE PETTY 

FAMILY COLLECTION. 

An early car stops beside the 

Cleburne Park and Rapid Transit 

Company’s open-air cab as it delivers 

passengers around town. 


Floyd “Slats” Rogers sits at the 

controls of his biplane, Old Soggy 

No. 1, the first airplane built in 

Texas; friend and Santa Fe engineer 

John Fine is standing. Constructed by 

Rogers in a garage on the campus of 

Southwestern Adventist University in 

Keene and flown over Cleburne 

in 1912. 


The Chisholm Trail Outdoor Museum is 

home to a historic Concord Stagecoach 

of the1800s. This icon of the Old West 

cost nearly $1,300 to build and was 

pulled by 4 to 6 horses while carrying 

up to nine passengers, a driver, and 

guard messenger. 


The Cleburne trolley cars, c. 1912- 

1916, ran along the Cleburne Electric 

Railway from 1910 to 1920 and 

included motormen Lee Lain, Mr. 

Lowery, W. J. Stillwell, Alfred Owens, 

and maintenance man Ben Garren. 

COURTESY OF R.H. TOMLIN. 

An early poster, c. 1917-1918, 

advertises the area’s Interurban line. 

cars read, “40 to 1. It took our forefathers forty 

times longer to make the thirty-two-mile trip 

than it takes us today the electric way. Our 

ancestors, the pioneers, built up the country. So 

does the interurban line, for, like real pioneers, 

the interurban makes the country better to 

live in.” 

The cars were repainted maroon and cream 

and embossed with gold lettering and included 

a parlor in the rear of each car. Each one 

was christened with a legendary Texas name, 

one was the Sam Houston, and offered hourly 

service for the one-hour-and-28-minute trip 

between Fort Worth and Cleburne with stops at 

Burleson and Joshua. Historians estimate that 

between its first run in 1912 until its last in 

1931, “more than 8.26 million paying 

customers rode the line.” 

As the country’s entire transportation system 

began to boom with more reliable cars and 

better roadways, service along the Interurban 

lines in most parts of America slowly came to an 

end between the late 1930s and ’40s. The 

Cleburne Division made its final run with a 

special VIP passenger car that came through 

Burleson on April 30, 1931. 


C HAPTER 

IV 

LIFE OF A COUNTY 

As the Reconstruction era came to an end in the late 1800s, Johnson County began its expansion 

into the new century with an entrepreneurial spirit that would rival any of its kind across the country. 

Livestock had remained the major factor in its economy, but by the time the Civil War had ravaged 

its way across the country, many farmers returned home to find their homesteads plundered. 

Necessity spurred these pioneering families to look to the soil for their success and corn and cotton 

soon became major staples of the economy. 

Within the pages of one of the earliest narratives published about the county in 1892, the author 

described the area as “the garden of the State of Texas, on account of its soil and climate…strong in 

every sense of the word, strong agriculturally, strong socially, and strong politically…this strength is 

due, of course, mainly to the character of the early immigrants, bringing those of like enterprising 

spirit from the older States, and secondarily to the opportunities afforded them by the soil and 

climate, and the facilities of transportation.” 

Johnson County has been the home of many important and legendary figures in its nearly two 

centuries of growth. Its citizens have played historic roles in the formation of the state and include 

such names as B. J. Chambers, W. F. Henderson, Horatio Gates Bruce, James Stephen Hogg, Martin 

McNulty Crane, William Franklin Ramsey, Lester Gladstone Bugbee, William R. Shannon, Samuel 

Palmer Brooks, Henry Carty Renfro, and William Carol Crawford. W. F. Henderson, who donated 

much of the land that would become present-day Cleburne, was chosen by James B. Weaver to become 

his vice-presidential running mate on the Greenback Party ticket in 1880. James Hogg, the state’s first 

native governor, served on the staff of Johnson County’s first newspaper, the Cleburne Chronicle. 

Farmers’ groups were prominent in their leadership in the area and played an important role in 

preserving the interests of many hard-working agrarian families across the county, as well as all of the 

southwest United States. The country’s massive grassroots movement, the Farmers Alliance, met in 

Cleburne for a decisive conference in 1886 that would set forth special resolutions that became 

known as the Cleburne Demands. They included restrictions on corporations, support for a national 

interstate-commerce law, expansion of the money supply, payoff of the national debt, and the support 

of labor, and were a complicated and conscientious effort on the part of the group to take back 

control of their historic interest in the lands that they had worked so hard to cultivate. The Alliance, 

which was part of a vast network of farmers’ groups across the United States, eventually ended its 

❖ 

The Johnson County Agricultural Fair 

welcomed nearly 15,000 people 

during its opening in 1917. The 

grandstand and many of the exhibit 

buildings were destroyed by a tornado 

in 1922. 


Chapter IV ✦ 19

❖ 

Top: The Cleburne Cotton Compress 

as it stood in the late 1800s. 


Below: Century-old tombstones stand 

in memory at the site of Union Hill, 

near present-day Joshua, where 

settlers first arrived in the early 

1850s and developed a small rural 

community by the 1870s. 

Presbyterians erected their first 

church at the site in 1880 and 

recorded the first burial in the church 

cemetery on February 4, 1883, 

pictured here in 2010.. 


Bottom, right: Cotton was king in 

parts of Johnson County and the 

first and last official bales were 

celebrated with great pride in 

the accomplishment. 


efforts though its platform would become the 

foundation for the People’s Party, or Populist 

Party, that gained wide recognition in the dawn 

of the early twentieth century. 

As Johnson County’s growing communities 

and their leaders diligently worked to ensure the 

continued success of the area, many church 

denominations and a wide variety of 

educational facilities began to establish 

themselves in nearly every corner of the county. 

Among the earliest founded in the county was 

the Cleburne Male and Female Institute, also 

known as Baptist College, which was directed 

under the Alvarado Baptist Association and built 

in 1868 near West Buffalo Creek in Cleburne. 

Peyton Irving, regarded as the first Johnson 

County School Superintendent, founded his 

Irving Select School for Young Ladies near 

Cleburne in the late 1870s and, as Texas 

historian Viola Block described in her 1970 

history of the county, “offered courses which met 

the standard of any Eastern college, embracing a 

full course of English and classical literature, 

mathematics, physics, and metaphysics.” 

By 1892 it was reported that “the public 

schools of Johnson County are in a flourishing 

condition, showing unmistakable evidences of 

improvement from year to year. The course of 

study in many of them is not confined to the 

public school course but embraces still higher 

branches of science and literature usually taught 

in the high schools and colleges of the older 

States. The people have a full appreciation of 

the benefits of these schools, and the patronage 

is steadily increasing.” 

The Grand View Collegiate Institute was 

organized in 1897 by Professor W. Burrus Head, 

later vice-president of Texas Power and Light, 

and remained in service to students through 

1907, when it was chartered as Grandview 

High School. 

The cornerstone was laid for Willie Denton 

College in Joshua in 1899 and it served four 

hundred students from across West Texas in its 

first year. The school was described as “nonsectarian, 

but a sound, moral and religious 

sentiment pervades the institution in all its 

departments. Every day’s work begins with 

devotional exercises…the policy of the school will 

be conservative, yet it will endeavor to keep pace 

with all the latest approved methods of teaching 

and management.” 

The Johnson County campus of Hill College, 

one of the state’s earliest municipal junior colleges 

when it was founded in Hillsboro in 1923, 

opened in 1971 in a National Guard armory. 

Within the decade the school quickly outgrew its 

original home and soon boasted more than one 

thousand students enrolled in the school’s varied 

curriculum. Hill College now includes campuses 

serving the county in Burleson and Cleburne. 

Johnson County soon became the home of 

thriving small towns such as Bono, Parker, 

Marystown, Egan, Freeland, Pleasant Point, Beulah, 

Bruce, Buel, Antioch, Barnesville, Bethany, 

Bethesda, Freeland, Equestria, Friendship, Noland’s 

River, Rock Creek, Cahill, Hopewell, Lane Prairie, 

Stubblefield, Trueloves, Heugh, George’s Crossing, 

Sand Flat, the African-American community of 

Nathan, and Goatneck, a community well-known 

in the twenty-first century for The Goatneck 100 

summer bicycle race. 

Many parts of the county prospered with 

diversified farming practices and exceptional 

dairy cow and beef cattle production, which 

gave the county wide acclaim as the “Jersey Isle 

of Texas.” By the 1950s, dairymen throughout 

the county produced more than thirty percent of 

the milk consumed in homes and stores all 

across North Central Texas. 


Early in the twenty-first century, Johnson 

County remains firmly established as a crossroads 

of commerce and is closely tied to its agricultural 

heritage and industrial tradition. The Barnett Shale 

gas exploration and numerous manufacturing 

plants have brought the area into a bold new era. 

The 2000 census calculated a population 

growth from 1990 to 2000 of over 30 percent 

and estimated nearly 150,000 residents living in 

its robust cities by 2010, which today include 

Alvarado, Briaroaks, Burleson, Cleburne, Cross 

Timber, Godley, Grandview, Joshua, Keene, Rio 

Vista, and Venus. Within its borders, there are 

nine outstanding independent school districts 

educating over 20,000 students. 

Nearly 50 companies, each employing over 

100 people, have made the county their home 

and have included such major brands as 

wholesale oil field supplier Halliburton Energy 

SVC, insulation manufacturer Johns Manville 

International, glass manufacturer AFGD, Inc., 

railroad car manufacturer GEO Group, 

wholesale grocers HEB Foods and Keene 

Distributors, lumber manufacturer Universal 

Forest Products, lighting manufacturer Rangaire 

LP, and one of the southwestern United States’ 

largest independent corrugated sheet plants, 

AGE Industries. The Johnson County Economic 

Development Commission played an integral 

role in supporting the county’s manufacturing 

sector when it celebrated the opening of the 

Sabre Galvanizing Plant in Alvarado, boasting 

the first “green galvanizer” in North America. 

In February of 2010, Johnson County 

leaders celebrated the long-awaited approval of 

agreements to fund and begin construction of 

Texas Highway 121, Southwest/Chisholm Trail 

Parkway, which will bring continued economic 

and residential growth to the area throughout 

the century. 

❖ 

Top: Watts Chapel Methodist Church 

and Cemetery, near Grandview, was 

named for the family of Nathaniel 

Franklin Watts, who settled in the 

area in 1872. 


Middle: Alvarado’s Victorian-style 

First Methodist Church, originally 

founded in 1866, still has its original 

church bell in 2010. It is a United 

Methodist Church Historic Site and 

was recorded as a Texas Historic 

Landmark in 1965. 


Bottom, left: The historic First Baptist 

Church in Godley was first known as 

Bethany Baptist Church and founded a 

few miles outside of town in the home 

of J. P. Vickers in 1878. The 

congregation voted to move the church 

into Godley in 1899. 


Bottom, right: A 1904 tintype photo of 

the Methodist Episcopal Church South 

and its pastor Rev. R. E. Goodrich. 

Constructed in 1886-87, it is the 

oldest surviving house of worship in 

Alvarado, located at 301 South 

Spears Street, and is still utilized for 

services every Sunday morning. 

PHOTO AND CAPTION COURTESY OF 


Chapter IV ✦ 21

❖ 


The Irving Select School for Young 

Ladies included classrooms on the 

building’s first floor and a dormitory 

on the second floor. 


The Hill College campus sits along 

Mayfield Parkway near Cleburne, 

2010. The land was donated by the 

Tolbert Mayfield family. 


Clebarro Junior College, depicted here 

in 1918, was known as State 

Christian Junior College when it was 

moved from Denton to Cleburne in 

1909. The building was later 

transformed into Meadowlawn 

Sanitarium by Dr. Charles Cooke. 


The Eller family stands outside their 

store at Sand Flat, c. 1905. Located in 

central Johnson County, the 

community’s first church was 

organized in 1868 and was the home 

of the Cuba Post Office in 1882. 


Texas Health Harris Methodist 

Hospital is located near Cleburne. It 

was originally Johnson County 

Memorial Hospital. George Walls and 

his family donated the land near Lake 

Pat Cleburne. Harris Methodist Walls 

Regional Hospital opened at the site in 

the summer of 1986. 


A view of Lake Pat Cleburne through 

the archways of the Robinson and Roe 

Chisholm Trail Pavilion in 2010. 


The Tourist Train operated by 

historian and author Jack Carlton 

passes through Cleburne in front of 

the Layland Museum. 


C HAPTER 

THE PLACES WE CALL HOME 

V 

ALVARADO 

Colonists were beginning to enter North Central Texas in the late 1840s when pioneer businessman 

David Mitchell established a trading post in the area. Settler William Balch, the “father of Alvarado,” soon 

received a land grant and built his home at the site in 1852. He had the land surveyed in 1854, built the 

first general stores on the town square, and donated sites for the local school, cemetery, and Union 

Church. The school first opened in 1855 and was the home of the Alvarado Masonic Institute by 1875. 

The bustling city’s economy quickly grew as citizens welcomed the Chicago, Texas, and Mexican 

Railway in 1880, later to be bought out by the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad in June 1882, and 

the arrival of the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad, otherwise known as the “Katy Railroad” in 1881. 

Within the next few years, Alvarado would flourish with a stately town hall, two schools, an opera house, 

a newspaper, a bank, a number of churches, two cotton gins, and the locomotive roundhouse and shops 

for the MKT Railroad. The city’s Masonic Institute eventually became the Alvarado Normal Institute in 

1899 and finally Alvarado High School in 1908. 

In 2004, Alvarado resident and historian Dorothy Schwartz described the rich history of Johnson 

County’s oldest town: 

❖ 

A 1961 aerial view of downtown 

Alvarado from the southwest. 

PHOTO AND CAPTION COURTESY 


William Balch came to Texas in 1848 from DuQuoin County, Illinois after learning of the free land available 

in Texas. When this area became opened for settlers, he came here with his sons and eight year old grandson, 

Joseph McClure, to select his Texas Land Grant. He chose the land where Jack Morton’s Cactus Jack’s Boot 

Country and the Percifield Ranch are now located. This had a nice spring of water, which was an essential part 

of the early settler’s selection of land. The men camped on this land and ate their Christmas dinner there in 1849. 

When his grandson, Joseph McClure, became an adult, he wrote of his recollections of the early days of 

Alvarado and Johnson County for Mr. John James, the editor of the Alvarado Bulletin. This material has been 

important in helping historians get an informative picture of pioneer life in early Johnson County. At the 

time the Balch family came here, there was an abundance of deer, wild turkey, black bear, quail, buffalo, 

mustangs, longhorn cattle, panthers, wild hogs, antelope, cougar, and wolves. 

Chapter V ✦ 23

❖ 

Above: The north side of the square, 

downtown Alvarado c. the 1890s. 

COURTESY OF MICHAEL PERCIFIELD. 

Top, right: Located at the center of the 

town square, the original city hall 

included a large jail and was removed 

in the 1920s. A garden was planted at 

the site and later included this gazebo, 

here in 2010. 


Below: The numerous landmarks that 

exist in Johnson County honor the 

area’s illustrious past. The county has 

preserved many of its historic 

cemeteries, including the Alvarado 

Glenwood Cemetery, seen here in 

2010. The Johnson County Cemetery 

Association, the first organization of 

its kind in Texas, was created “for 

future generations to do research and 

maybe understand the struggles 

endured to settle this land.” 

At the time Mr. Balch and his family returned 

by wagon to the Alvarado area in 1851 to claim 

their land, they found a Caddo Indian family living 

on the side of the spring where they had 

planned to build their cabin, so the family decided 

to build their cabin on the other side. Another 

early settler, Sam Myers and his family, settled on 

land several miles north of the Balch home. Mr. 

Myers’ wife and children were sick with no one to 

care for them. When the Billingsley family came 

by their camp, one of the Billingsley’s daughters 

stayed with them to care for the family. The men 

from the Balch and Billingsley families assisted the 

Myers’ family in building them a cabin as well as 

building cabins for their own families. The Indians 

watched as the cabins were being built and found 

it rather humorous when they heard the roosters 

crow. Young Joseph remembered playing with the 

Indian boys. The boys would run foot races. The 

Indian boys taught Joseph how to ride bareback 

and he taught them how to play ball. When Joseph 

had to chop wood, cut weeds from corn and 

round up live stock, the Indian boys would help 

him. When a lobo wolf was stalking another early 

settler’s little boy, Joseph and the Indian boys shot 

at the wolf with their sling shots and bows and 

arrows and ran the wolf away, thus saving the little 

boys life. 

In 1856 a young black slave girl came in the 

wagon train with the George Sigler family to settle 

in the Alvarado area. After washing the family’s 

clothes, she hung them on a tree to dry. When she 

ran outside after dark to get the clothes, a black 

bear grabbed her, ran into the timber and killed 

her. She was buried in the Senterwood Cemetery 

over the west fence of the Balch Cemetery. Michael 

Percifield located her grave site, and shortly afterwards 

in 1997, the Balch/Senterwood Cemetery 

Association placed a tombstone at her grave to pay 

tribute to this brave young Black slave girl who 

gave her life to help open this frontier. 

The Caddo Indians were living in east Texas 

before 1541. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, 

when settlers began coming into east Texas, some 

of the Caddo families moved west. Several groups 

of this tribe came as far west as the Trinity River. 

Some of these groups were roaming and gathering, 

and some stayed long enough to plant crops of 

corn, beans, pumpkins, and sun flowers. There is 

no proof that these Indians farmed here, but in all 

probability they did. The Caddo Indians were 

peaceful with the settlers while the Comanche and 

Apache tribes were quite hostile. The trails these 

hostile Indians traveled going to and from Mexico 

were near Caddo and Comanche Peak, in northwestern 

Johnson County. 

After this area was opened to settlers, the 

Caddo Indians began moving west. In 1859, 

when outlaws and persons wanting to rid the 

area of Indians were cruel to them, Robert S. 

Neighbors, an agent for the Indians of Texas, 

took the tribe to the Washita River in Oklahoma, 

southwest of Oklahoma City. 

Before the town was formed, David Mitchell 

had a “Trading Post“ for the Indians and settlers 

which was located northeast of the site of 

Alvarado. The trading post was small and could 

not sufficiently furnish the needs of the families 

coming into the area. 


Mr. Balch bought land from the A. J. Patton and 

the Ira Glaze Land Grants to build a town. He 

donated land for the local cemetery and a lot for 

the combined church, school, and meeting house. 

This lot is located at 202 S. Cummings Street, 

presently the home of Mr. and Mrs. Homer Cuellar. 

The men in the community gathered at this location 

to build a log cabin for the students. While 

working on the building they discussed the forming 

of a new county. The men did not like having 

to take taxes and fines to Waxahachie, the county 

seat of Ellis County. At the site of the school, 

church, and Union building, the different denominations 

that worshipped there were the Methodist, 

Baptist, Cumberland Presbyterian, and Christian 

Churches. According to Lenox and Mildred Byrd in 

their book, History of the Alvarado First United 

Methodist Church, 1986, the building was governed 

by a Board of Trustees from each denomination and 

one “outsider”. Each denomination had its Sunday 

and the Fifth Sunday was the property of the 

“world, the flesh and the devil” as some referred to 

it. In the summer months, church services and 

town and county business was conducted under 

the arbors and shade trees on this property. The log 

cabin was a small building and could not accommodate 

the increase in school age children coming 

into the community. They conducted school in the 

upstairs of the Bright and Waddle General Store. 

In the summer months the men met, conducted 

town and county business and held local 

court under the oak trees and brush arbor on the 

property at 202 Cummings Street. In the cold 

winter months their meetings were held in the 

Bright and Waddle General Store located on the 

northwest corner of the square, in what is now 

David’s Grocery Store parking lot. 

When the Balch family came to settle this new 

frontier in 1851, the roads were Indian and Buffalo 

trails. In traveling from the Balch property to 

Joseph’s mother’s home, Rebecca Balch McClure 

Parker’s land grant, near Egan, the family had to 

ride horseback until the trails could be made wide 

enough to accommodate wagons and buggies. The 

men cut down trees and smoothed the banks of the 

ravines and creeks so the wagons and buggies were 

easier to travel over. 

After the town was formed in 1854, Mr. Balch 

wanted to name it Pittsburgh. Mr. Abraham 

Onstott, the local sheriff, wanted to name the 

town Alvarado after a small beautiful little town 

on the Gulf Coast south of Vera Cruz. During the 

Mexican-American War, Abraham was stationed 

there and thought it would be an appropriate 

name for our town. A vote was taken and now we 

live in Alvarado, Texas. 

❖ 

Above: Looking toward the east side of 

Alvarado’s town square from the 

gazebo, 2010. 


Below: This historical marker, located 

in the town square, tells the legendary 

story of one of Alvarado’s most 

notorious incidents. The remains of 

both men now lie in Balch Cemetery 

and are commemorated with official 

Confederate grave markers. 


BRIAROAKS 

The community of Briaroaks is located in 

northern Johnson County and began as a 

subdivision in the 1960s. The town was 

incorporated in April of 1971 and today includes 

a population of nearly five hundred residents. 

BURLESON 

Among the area’s most prominent and fastestgrowing 

cities in the twenty-first century is 

Burleson. Established near the end of the Civil War 

in far north Johnson County, the city was born of 

necessity on October 10, 1881, as the Missouri, 

Kansas, and Texas Railway, the Katy, found 

Chapter V ✦ 25

❖ 

Above: Burleson in the early 1900s. 


Top, right: Among Johnson County’s 

historic landmarks stands the original 

Clark-Renfro House. It is the home of 

the heirs of Henry C. Renfro, who 

donated the Burleson townsite and 

provided much of his land to the 

Missouri-Kansas and Texas Railway 

as it built its line into the area. He 

also named the town to honor his 

friend and famous minister and 

educator Dr. Rufus Burleson. 


Below: A map of the original town 

of Burleson. 

COURTESY OF MARY NORRIS. 

themselves in need of a reliable water source 

between Alvarado and Fort Worth. A post office 

was first established in the local saloon by 1882 

with rural mail delivery beginning in 1906. 

The first recorded history of the area, Memorial 

and Biographical History of Johnson and Hill 

Counties, was published in 1892 and recognized 

Burleson “as a game little town of about 150 

inhabitants, situated in a rich portion of Johnson 

County…the center of a fine wheat-growing 

region, and does a vast amount of business.” The 

shipment of cord wood gleaned from the plentiful 

cross timbers and the flourishing cotton trade 

would support to the city’s growth into the 

twentieth century. A reporter wrote in 1900 that 

that the expanding city was “well supplied with 

educational facilities…the people are kind, 

sociable, intelligent and progressive” and the land 

“unusually charming and picturesque.” 

It was named by the father of Burleson, Rev. 

Henry C. Renfro, to honor his friend and the 

state’s well-known pioneer Baptist minister and 

educator, Dr. R. C. Burleson, who served as the 

president of Waco College from 1861 to 1886 

and twice as the president of Baylor University 

from 1851 to 1861 and again from 1886 to 1897. 

Renfro studied at Baylor University in 1853 to 

become a minister and, under the appointment of 

Burleson, served as a chaplain during the Civil 

War. He also helped organize Bethesda Baptist 

Church in Johnson County and held church 

arrivals across the area. When Renfro sold his 

large tract of land to railroad representative 

Grenville Dodge to establish the depot, it was 

agreed that Renfro could call it Burleson. 

As the city grew in stature, early businessmen 

and ranchers including Benjamin and his son 

George W. Bransom, P. H. Goodloe, the 

Armstrong Brothers, and James Pickett were 

among the first to realize the potential of its 

centralized location between Cleburne and Fort 

Worth, and stores and churches were soon 

materializing around the town square. 

By the early twentieth century, Burleson was 

growing with a downtown business district and 

one of Texas’ early educational facilities, Red 

Oak Academy. The school, previously Alta Vista 

College, was established in nearby Brushy 

Mound in 1879 and was transferred to the Red 

Oak Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian 

Church in 1893 and would enroll nearly 500 

students before it closed in 1899. 

The Forth Worth Southern Traction Company 

was founded in 1911 to formulate plans for the 

development of an Interurban transportation 

through the town and businessman and 

community leader Albert H. Loyless had been 

approached by the company to become their local 

ticket agent and electric service representative. 

Loyless owned the successful Loyless-Robbins 

Pharmacy in downtown Burleson and agreed to 

move from his two-story wooden building to a 


new brick building that would become a 

pharmacy, soda fountain, and the Interurban 

ticket office. The building included a freight dock 

and freight room along with space for a store and 

offices; an electrical station was erected behind the 

structure to provide power for the entire town. 

The Interurban system debuted in Burleson on 

September 1, 1912, and would bring passengers 

and freight into the area for the next twenty years. 

The pharmacy quickly became a “community 

center” while the city became a welcome stop for 

weary travelers and home to many. 

Burleson continued to progress in farming 

and land development, while downtown 

buildings and residential homes sprang up 

around the city and it was incorporated and 

boasted electricity by 1913. As it grew, Burleson 

welcomed the addition of Texas Highway 21 

from Fort Worth and churches and business 

organizations led the support of the community, 

which was incorporated by 1930 and began the 

annexation of land as new business and 

residential needs progressed. 

By the 1960s, Burleson had become a suburb 

of Fort Worth and was ranked among the 

twenty fastest growing cities in Texas. The city 

also published no less than three newspapers at 

the time, the Burleson Star, founded in 1965, the 

Joshua Tribune, founded in 1970, and the 

Burleson Star Review, founded in 1969. 

The definitive history of the city, Burleson: The 

First One Hundred Years, was published in 1981 and 

recorded the population boom among residents 

and businesses at the time. “As dependence on 

agriculture declined and transportation increased, 

more people living in nearby Fort Worth moved to 

the suburbs. Many moved to the city of Burleson, 

but many more settled around the city on the 

❖ 

Top: Burleson’s original Interurban 

ticket office and a favorite gathering 

place of people across the community 

in the early twentieth century, the 

building was bought by Robert 

Garland Knox Deering after 1935 to 

house The Burleson News. The City 

of Burleson purchased the historic 

building to serve as a visitor’s center 

in 2000 and the landmark is now 

home to the Burleson Heritage 

Museum and Visitor Center, which 

offers a wide variety of outstanding 

artifacts and timeless photographs 

collected and preserved by the 

Burleson Heritage Foundation. 


Middle: Colorful artwork adorns 

Burleson’s quaint streets and historic 

buildings in 2010. 


Bottom: It seemed that the entire city 

of Burleson turned out to become a 

part of this vintage photograph taken 

in 1932. 

COURTESY OF THE BURLESON 

HERITAGE FOUNDATION. 

Chapter V ✦ 27

❖ 

Above: Burleson’s historic downtown 

district in 2010. 


Top, right: One of Burleson’s major 

attractions in its historic downtown, 

Babe’s, in 2010. J. D. and E. M. 

Wilson, the Wilson Brothers, 

constructed the building in 1903; they 

began purchasing lots in the city in 

1899 and sold farm machinery, 

carriages and buggies, furniture, 

and caskets. The building was restored 

in 1989. 

PHOTO BY EMILY DABNEY. 

Below: Burleson City Hall in 2010. 


beautiful farm and timber lands. Growth 

surrounding Burleson has equaled or exceeded that 

of the city. This rural growth was assisted and 

accelerated by the installation of the Johnson 

County Rural Electric Cooperative and the 

Bethesda Water Supply Company. 

Today, Burleson has a population of more than 

thirty thousand, nearly double the number in 

1990, and is a sprawling metropolis of business 

and community life amidst the grand history of the 

area. The Burleson Independent School District 

welcomed over eighty-five hundred students 

districtwide in 2007 and has been recognized for its 

outstanding achievements by the Texas Education 

Agency and the Texas Assessment of Academic 

Skills. The quaint and historic downtown district is 

a renaissance of old and new and includes 

outstanding eateries and unique shops. 

Burleson is also the home of outstanding 

attractions including the Russell Farm Art Center, 

the historic 1877 farm of Martha Glenn Russell 

transformed by Charlie and Louise Boren in 1979 

to become a haven for artistic expression among 

artists and students. The first American Idol winner, 

pop vocalist and actress Kelly Clarkson, was born 

in Burleson in 1982, while two-time U.S. Olympic 

volleyball team member Stacy Sykora is a 

hometown hero among residents of the city. 

The City of Burleson was presented with 

The Governor’s Community Achievement Award 

for conserving and enhancing the natural 

resources of Texas by then Governor George W. 

Bush in 1998. By the early twenty-first century, 

the city’s population included nearly twenty-one 

thousand residents. 

In 1959, historian Noble Clark wrote of the 

city, “We are moving forward and should 

continue to do so. It would be well at this time 

to reflect on the humble beginnings of our city. 

The untiring efforts of our predecessors in 

meeting and solving problems should inspire us 

in our efforts to face and resolve the difficulties 

of this day. We must grow in a progressive 

manner or face the prospect of stagnation. 

Burleson is fortunate by reason of its location 

and resources. May we continue to follow the 

example set by our founders and provide an 

even better community for our children.” 

CLEBURNE 

The city of Cleburne, regarded early on as the 

“City of Roses” for the lush bed of flowers which 

grew in the area, has been Johnson County’s seat 

of government since it was first called Camp 

Henderson in 1867. Named in honor of famed 

Civil War hero General Patrick Ronayne 

Cleburne, the city included a large grist and saw 

mill erected by the godfather of Cleburne, Colonel 

John Shaffer, in 1867 and was incorporated in 

May of 1871 with a population reaching nearly 

700. It was said that “unlike most other places, 

the town can never outgrow the country. A more 

favorable spot could scarcely be found in this part 

of the State in which to build up a town.” 

Outstanding colleges such as the Cleburne 

Male and Female Institute, also known as “the 

Baptist College,” and founded by Reverend W. A. 

Mason and the Alvarado Baptist Association in 

1868, and the Irving Select School for Young 

Ladies were well-established by the 1880s, while 

the city’s first public school opened in 1884. 

Church denominations quickly began to rise 

across the county and the Baptists, Churches of 

Christ, Methodists and Episcopals often shared 


the local Baptist College building for services. 

The Methodist church was the first to begin a 

building program in the city, though the 

Episcopal Church completed its building first in 

1872 at the corner of Henderson and Robinson. 

The group later established a new church at 

Anglin and Wardville. The Baptist Church built 

its third church in the city at the corner of 

Willingham and Caddo by 1900. 

Newspapers were among the earliest thriving 

businesses in Cleburne and the city would boast 

over half of all of Johnson County’s papers 

throughout the coming century. Its first was The 

Cleburne Chronicle, established in 1868 by Major 

Jack Davis and his protégé and future Texas 

governor James Hogg. Davis remained in the 

area for only a short time before selling the paper 

to J. W. Graves. Graves’ brother, W. H. Graves, 

and Andrew Young founded their own four-page 

weekly Cleburne Tribune in 1886. The Johnson 

County Review was founded in 1891 by J. A. 

Templeton and H. E. Oldfather. The Byrd 

brothers established their Weekly Telegram, 

which later became The Enterprise, as well as 

their Cleburne Weekly Bulletin, later known as the 

Alvarado Bulletin, in 1880. In 1895 The Enterprise 

was printed both as the Cleburne Daily Enterprise 

and Cleburne Weekly Enterprise. On January 2, 

1924, the papers were consolidated by a stock 

company and the first issue of the Cleburne Daily 

Times remained in circulation until 1928 when it 

was purchased along with the Cleburne Morning 

Review to become the Cleburne-Times Review. 

The city quickly grew in prestige and 

population as thousands came to the area, which 

was already known as a transportation center due 

to the construction of a modern railway system 

and thriving business district. An electricity plant 

was first built in Cleburne in 1888, while 

Cleburne Electric Light opened in 1892. Texas 

Power and Light became the city’s official supplier 

in 1912. An intercity trolley, the Cleburne Street 

Railway, shuttled school children and Santa Fe 

shop personnel at a cost of five cents to travel to 

their destinations in 1911. 

A major contributor to the city’s growth was 

the presence of the Santa Fe railway that brought 

a wide population to the area by the end of the 

nineteenth century, while many other businesses 

were established as the town square opened to 

the community. Though the important Santa Fe 

Shops were eventually closed in the late 1980s, 

historian John Watson wrote in 2008, “Cleburne 

has always been known as a railroad town and is 

still very much in the railroad business.” 

The first bank opened in 1869 and the Brown 

Opera House, built by Sheriff John C. Brown, 

debuted at the corner of Anglin and Chambers 

in 1877. The opera house was well-known 

across North Texas and drew popular actors and 

plays from Dallas and Forth Worth. Among its 

most illustrious guests was abolitionist and 

social reformer Henry Ward Beecher. One of the 

oldest businesses in Cleburne was C. Dickson 

Hardware, established by Campbell Dickson 

and William Hill in 1878. 

Cleburne’s telephone company opened in 

1882 and the Southwestern Telegraph and 

❖ 

Above: Cleburne’s Central Public 

School also served as city hall when it 

was constructed in 1887. The building 

burned in 1916. 


Below: Cleburne High School opened 

in 1919 and was first directed by 

Superintendent and legendary 

Cleburne figure Emmett Brown, who 

implemented a unique system of boys’ 

and girls’ study halls. Known as the B. 

J. Chambers Building, the venerable 

landmark later served as Cleburne’s 

junior high school 

CAPTION COURTESY MOLLIE MIMS. 


Chapter V ✦ 29

❖ 

Right: Historian A. J. Byrd wrote of 

the city in 1879 that “it was founded 

and settled by adventurers who were 

brave, hardy and inured to dangers, 

and who were above the average 

pioneer in intellectual culture and 

information.” 


Below: Downtown Cleburne was the 

home of the Wright Building, which 

still stands today. A. J. Wright 

purchased Reverend Harry Luck’s 

third Chaparral vehicle, the “Luck 

Truck,” for deliveries. 


Bottom, right: Johnson County 

Historian Jack Carlton stands beside a 

monument dedicating the First (old) 

Cleburne City Cemetery in 2008. The 

cemetery is located on what later 

became the original football/baseball 

field, Rhome Field, for Cleburne High 

School, c. 1900-1929. 

Telephone Company arrived in 1897. Cleburne 

Automatic Telephone Company began operation 

around 1904. 

The year 1899 marked the arrival of one of 

Cleburne’s most prominent early businessmen 

and building owners, A. J. Wright. He first 

purchased the T. R. James Wholesale Saddlery 

building, which took in nearly a block of 

downtown property. After fire destroyed part of 

the building, Wright purchased and built across 

the entire block from Main to Caddo and the 

family continued to erect several buildings 

across the town. 

W. J. Layland founded his historic plumbing 

company, which remains in the twenty-first 

century, in Cleburne in 1904. While his company 

thrived throughout the city, Layland enjoyed 

what would become one of his most important 

legacies for the many generations of families and 

visitors to Cleburne in the coming centuries—an 

astounding collection of antiques, Native 

American artifacts and prehistoric finds from his 

travels around the world. The entire collection 

would eventually be housed just across the street 

from his business in the Carnegie Library, and 

would later become the centerpiece of the city of 

Cleburne’s Layland Museum. 

As the entire country entered the painful years 

of the Great Depression all four city banks failed 

in the 1920s, while a railway strike commenced in 

1922. As part of The New Deal program, the 

Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the 

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) thrived across 

America as the country climbed its way out of the 

severely depressed economy. By the 1930s, the 

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) included two 


❖ 

Left: The Wright Building was 

beautifully restored to its historic 

significance in 2004 to become “a 

focal point of revitalization for 

downtown Cleburne.” Howard 

Dudley, a visionary entrepreneur 

dedicated to the restoration of the 

area, played a significant role in 

efforts to refurbish it, as well as other 

aging structures. 


hundred workers in Johnson County. A number 

of outstanding schools, community centers and 

other buildings were constructed across the 

county, while one of the group’s major 

construction projects, Cleburne State Park, 

debuted in 1941. The park is a 528-acre oasis that 

includes a spring-fed lake and a variety of trees 

and wildflowers among its rocky hills and open 

fields. Fishing and boating are among the area’s 

favorite pastimes. Cleburne Schools’ iconic Yellow 

Jacket Stadium, affectionately referred to as “The 

Rock,” was also construction by the WPA. 

By the 1950s, Cleburne was again experiencing 

major growth and businesses and families 

continued to be drawn to the warmth and small 

town charm of the historic city. By the close of the 

twentieth century, Cleburne was the home of some 

forty manufacturing facilities and a new regional 

hospital for its citizens. 

Famous citizens have included pianist Al 

Stricklin, one of the Original Texas Playboys, who 

was often heard playing at the piano in the Bargain 

Annex of Campbell Dickson’s local hardware store 

where Stricklin also served as the store manager. 

Fiddler Randy Elmore joined his first band in 

Cleburne and has gone on to play with several big 

country bands. Drummer Danny McGonagil has 

played with Reba McEntire. Cleburne native 

Randy Rogers and his eponymous band continue 

to gain a following in the regional music scene. 

Johnson County residents have also made the 

mark on collegiate and professional sports. 

David McWilliams, a Cleburne High School 

football legend from 1956 to 1959, served as 

head coach of teams at the University of Texas 

and Texas Tech in the 1980s and 1990s and was 

inducted into the Texas High School Football 

Hall of Fame in 1998. Spike and Dave Owens 

were both successful major league baseball 

players during the 1980s and 1990s. Tris 

Speaker, an outstanding early baseball player on 

the Texas League Cleburne Railroaders, would 

go on to play at the national level. 

Below: The grand dinner and banquet 

ceremonies to commemorate the 

opening of the Liberty Hotel were held 

on December 31, 1924. The building 

was constructed by A. J. Wright after 

he was approached by a group called 

the Cleburne Enterprise to fund the 

effort. Wright “shared the dream of a 

grand hotel for travelers to stay while 

visiting his beloved city.” The cost of 

the entire project totaled $200,000 

and included 69 rooms, all with their 

own telephone, while the second floor 

rooms included private baths. The 

hotel was purchased for renovation in 

2004 by Howard and Scott Dudley 

and reopened on April 22, 2009. The 

hotel mixes the “elegance of the past 

with the luxuries of the today.” 

Chapter V ✦ 31

❖ 

Top: Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Layland. 


Middle: The Layland Museum now 

resides across the first floor of one of 

Cleburne’s most prestigious buildings, 

the 1904 Carnegie Library. 


Bottom: The cornerstone of the Greek 

Revival-style Carnegie Library was 

laid on January 6, 1904, and the 

building opened to patrons on May 

25, 1905. The idea for the library 

came in early 1900 when the 

Women’s Club of Cleburne began a 

petition for a local library and 

requested the help of steel magnate 

and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. 

By 1931 the Texas State Library 

Commission had classified the library 

as “one of the two best in the state 

with more than 25,000 volumes.” The 

building was entered into the National 

Register of Historic Places in 1976 

and today is the home of the Layland 

Museum and its permanent collection 

of over 35,000 artifacts and some 

50,000 historic photographs. 



❖ 

Top: Cleburne’s state-of-the-art, forty 

five thousand square foot Conference 

Center was completed in March 2010. 

Middle: The Lowell Smith, Sr., History 

Center is a Layland Museum annex 

that opened in 2010. The original 

building housed a grocery store, 

however, the majority of its use was as 

an automobile dealership. The 

exterior has been restored to its 

original look. The interior has been 

rehabilitated into a functioning 

extension of museum activities. 


Another native son, National Geographic’s 

Boyd Matson, honed his journalist skills as a 

student in speech and theater at Cleburne High 

School, where he graduated in 1965. 

Today, the historic seat of Johnson County has 

grown to an estimated population of 30,000, a 20- 

percent increase since the 2000 census. The 

Cleburne Independent School District, whose 

student enrollment topped 6,500 in 2009, was 

approved for a $36-million bond to fund 

construction of new elementary schools and the 

renovation of projects districtwide. Natural gas 

production has increased to triple digits, while new 

technology for horizontal drilling in the Barnett 

shale formation has increased the city’s visibility 

statewide. A bond was recently passed to extend 

Highway 121 from South Fort Worth into Johnson 

County through Godley and into Cleburne. Work 

on the extension should begin in 2011. 

In her 2009 photographic history of the city, 

prolific author and Cleburne native Mollie Mims 

wrote of the future of her beloved community, 

“With growth comes change and challenges… 

Cleburne is no longer a rural community. We 

are diversified in our religions, our professions, 

and our cultural offerings, but we continue to 

make this a hometown that is proud to share the 

past and determined to mold the future in a 

positive direction.” 

CROSS 

TIMBER 

Two towns with the name Cross Timber have 

existed in Johnson County. Named for its location 

Bottom: Cleburne High School’s 

historic Yellow Jacket Stadium was 

originally constructed from 1939 to 

1941 through one of America’s most 

significant reconstruction efforts of the 

New Deal program, the Works 

Progress Administration that existed 

from 1935 to 1943. It was built on 

land provided by Emmett Brown, “the 

person who had rendered the most 

distinctive service to the citizens of 

Johnson County” in the mid-1900s, at 

a cost of nearly $80,000. 


Chapter V ✦ 33

merchant in Cleburne when he donated the land 

for the new townsite of Godley and twenty acres 

as a right-of-way to the Gulf, Colorado & Santa 

Fe Railway. The local depot was built in 1886 and 

the post office opened in 1888 to join a thriving 

community that included a gristmill, three cotton 

gins, and two dairy-processing plants. 

A one-room school was opened in 1895, 

while the old Bethany Baptist Church was moved 

into the town in 1897 to be shared by several 

congregations. Godley College was built in 1899 

and became Godley High School in 1902. 

As the town grew into the twentieth century, 

Godley served as a center of Holstein dairy 

farming. The town’s population included nearly 

nine hundred residents in 2000. 

GRANDVIEW 

Grandview native and historian Brenda J. 

Edwards has been researching and writing of 

her hometown’s history for over twenty-two 

years. Born on a cotton farm three and a half 

miles north of the town, Mrs. Edwards wrote of 

this beloved community in 2010: 

❖ 

Top: Godley High School remains a 

historic landmark in the community 

in 2010 and was originally built by 

the WPA. 


Middle: Early morning in downtown 

Godley, Texas, 2010. 


Bottom: The mystery grave of Annie. 

COURTESY OF BRENDA J. EDWARDS. 

near the western edge of the western cross timbers 

region, the first town was settled in 1853 and a 

post office opened in 1870. The pioneer 

community included a school, church, and several 

businesses by 1885 and included a population of 

200 by 1890. After the Missouri, Kansas and Texas 

and the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe lines 

bypassed the area, the post office closed in 1904. 

Today, the new town of Cross Timber between 

Burleson and Cleburne was incorporated in May 

of 1991 and includes several businesses and a 

population of nearly three hundred. 

GODLEY 

First settlements in the area of old Grand 

View were in 1850 and the town of old Grand 

View was located along Chambers Creek in the 

southeast part of Johnson County. Rich black 

land of 640 acres was granted to Fielding L. 

Kirtley, the first to establish a post office on April 

4, 1856. Kirtley gave land for the Baptist Church 

and the cemetery and built a log cabin, mercantile 

store and blacksmith shop and traded with 

the immigrants and Indians coming into the area. 

Kirtley did not have a name for his settlement. In 

1854 Kirtley’s brother-in-law John Whitmire, a 

church of Christ minister from Ohio, came to 

A large bronze plaque hangs in downtown 

Godley to mark the town’s centennial anniversary 

in 1983 and celebrate the life of its founder and 

namesake, Robley B. Godley, who had purchased 

a ranch in the area to raise sheep. Godley later 

sold the ranch to horseman J. Howard Ardrey, 

who became the town’s first grocer and served as 

its postmaster. Godley became a pioneer lumber 


uy land. As he was viewing the land he 

exclaimed, “What a grand view!” Kirtley liked 

this name and named his settlement Grand View. 

Kirtley left the area and James F. Scurlock purchased 

325 acres of land from Kirtley. He began 

laying out the town and selling lots for $25 and 

donated land for a Methodist Church. Grand 

View Masonic Lodge received their charter #266 

on June 14, 1861, the oldest in Johnson County. 

Scurlock did not get to realize his dream for he 

was made a Lieutenant Colonel in the State Militia 

when the war between the north and south broke 

out. He was detailed to supply food for the soldiers 

in Louisiana and was accompanied by his son, 

Thomas A., and Lewis Goen and Capt. J. S. 

Morrow drove a load of beeves to southern 

Louisiana, where they were captured and 

imprisoned. While they were federal prisoners 

Scurlock and his son contracted the deadly measles 

fever and died. Before Scurlock had left the area of 

old Grand View he had sold the site of the 

proposed town to F. M. Sansom and, with the help 

of Scurlock’s family, carried out the development of 

the town plans. The name of Grand View was 

changed to one word, Grandview, in 1925. 

On May 31, 1867, a young woman and man 

arrived at the old town of Grand View. They 

bought supplies and camped on the creek north of 

the town. The woman was found the next day, 

shot in the temple, and the man was gone with no 

trace of horses or supplies. The women of the 

town cared for the woman and a handkerchief was 

found with the name “Annie” etched into it. After 

the woman was buried a few weeks later two large 

cone-shaped stones appeared at the gravesite. The 

name Annie was written on one. A marker for the 

grave was placed in 1967, and the stones remain 

there in 2010. 

❖ 

Left: Truckloads of cotton line 

the streets near McDuff’s Gin 

in Grandview. 

COURTESY OF BRENDA J. EDWARDS. 

Below: The early architecture of 

Grandview is evident as visitors make 

their way along its downtown avenue 

in 2010. 


Bottom, left: One of the few structures 

saved from the devastating fire that 

swept through Grandview in 1920, 

the Emory home was originally built 

by Maryland native John Samuel 

Emory and his wife Mary Elizabeth in 

1907. The home remained in the 

Emory family until 1961 and became 

an official Texas Historic Landmark 

in 1986. 

COURTESY CHARLES AND SUSAN 

VARNER COLLECTION. 

Bottom, right: Crowds gather along 

the streets of early day Grandview. 


Chapter V ✦ 35

❖ 

Above: Grandview citizens gathered 

at the town’s Missouri-Kansas -Texas 

Depot when President Theodore 

Roosevelt’s train came through town 

on April 8, 1905. 


Below: The Emory Home in 2010. 

Charles and Susan Varner bought and 

began restoring the home in the early 

1970s and have now raised their 

family in this Johnson County 

landmark. The Emory Home is filled 

with over a century of Grandview 

life and includes original fireplaces 

and woodwork throughout its 

historic rooms. 

PHOTOS BY ERIC DABNEY.. 

Grand View’s Education Association was 

formed in December of 1879. Grand View once 

had a college, Grand View Collegiate Institute, 

with an enrollment of three hundred. It was the 

largest frame building in the state used for school 

purposes in 1899. It was rechartered as Grand 

View High School and Grammar School in 1908. 

Grandview Schools of 2010 have been chosen as 

the highest scholastic academic achievements with 

enrollment of over one thousand students. 

The main line of the M.K. & T. Railroad, 

constructed in 1882, caused the relocation of the 

town of Grand View. The town moved one mile 

south of the original site of “Old Town,” and all 

that is left is the original Grandview Cemetery. 

The first National Bank of Grand View, known 

today as Grandview Bank, was established in 

1890 and is the fifth oldest bank in the state of 

Texas. The bank building is now the only 

building left after the fire of March 1920. 

Grandview in spite of a disastrous fire of 

March 14, 1920, has developed into one of the 

leading towns in Johnson County. The fire, which 

began in the south part of town, destroyed 72 

dwellings and half of the business houses. The 

bank building and the old English restaurant, the 

O’Hara building and Harrell and Hutchins 

building and the Commercial Hotel and several 

homes were saved. The town of Grandview 

rebuilt and prospered once again. Grandview 

streets were paved with brick in 1922. 

Grandview’s principal source of income for 

many years was agriculture. More cotton was 

produced in the Grandview area than any other 

Johnson County section. The area was noted for 

corn and fine-blooded hogs. Many cattle and 

horse ranches and dairies now call the Grandview 

area home. 

Grandview had many businesses that served 

the citizens with fine shops, dry goods stores, 

and mercantile and food stores. Grandview was 

once known for a corn and livestock show, 

which was begun in 1939, that people traveled 

for miles to attend. Even today, in 2010, the 

town has a growth of new businesses and one of 

the highest rated nursing homes in the state of 

Texas, built in 1979. Grandview also boasts a 

fine public library that opened in 1998. 

Grandview is proud of its heritage and the 

people who live here today are loyal to the town 

and its growth. The town now has a population 

of over thirteen hundred and the future of 

Grandview is bright with room to grow in 

every direction. 

JOSHUA 

County historian Viola Block once wrote, 

“Railroads had a way of changing things in the 

early days.” The first community in the area, 

Caddo Grove, understood that sentiment. It was 

located two miles west of present-day Joshua and 

became a thriving town after Major E. M. Heath 

and others began building stores and a flour and 

saw mill. When the railroad came through the area 

in 1881, the tracks bypassed Caddo Grove and 

Joshua was born in 1882 with the building of the 

local train station and the moving of the popular 

local drugstore owned by Dr. D. B. McMillan to the 

new town. Though residents first christened the 

town as Caddo Peak, the name was already in use 

and Joshua was chosen. The first business and the 

local post office opened in 1882 and by 1890 the 

population grew to three hundred and included 

cotton gins, a school, a local newspaper—the 

Johnson County Record—and a hotel. 

The years 1900 and 1912 brought destructive 

fires to the town but by 1914 the community had 

rebuilt to include an ice plant, several churches, a 

thriving bank, and the historic Joshua Star 


newspaper. Another newspaper, the Joshua 

Tribune, began its publication run in 1977 and 

remained until the 1990s when it was moved to 

Burleson. As Joshua continued to flourish in the 

county, it was incorporated in the mid-1950s and 

had become the peanut and sweet potato capital 

of Johnson County. 

At the centennial of the county in 1954, one 

writer commented, “A goodly number of the 

natives may not know it, but the little town has 

just about everything to make its future a success. 

One of the busiest highways in Texas runs 

through the town…. Three churches, an 

outstanding school plant, good water and 

diversified farming complete the success picture.” 

The town’s population grew to nearly six 

thousand by 2004. Prosperous manufacturing 

plants within the town have included the 

production of aluminum products, boat trailers, 

leather goods, and windows. Joshua is also the 

home of the historic Union Hill Presbyterian 

Church and cemetery east of town. 

Adventist College in 1977. Graduate level work 

was first offered in 1987 and the institution 

changed its name to Southwestern Adventist 

University in the 1990s. 

“As the church school has grown,” one observer 

commented, “so has grown the village of Keene for 

the life of one is practically identical with the 

❖ 

Above: Joshua City Hall, 2010. 


Below and bottom: Early Keene, Texas. 

COURTESY OF SOUTHWESTERN 

ADVENTIST UNIVERSITY. 

KEENE 

When Keene’s first settler, Jeremiah 

Easterwood, arrived in the early 1850s, forwardthinking 

citizens quickly realized the importance 

of a local church and school. Formerly known as 

Elm Grove, the town’s educational roots were 

planted deep within its soil as the Keene 

Industrial Academy was born. Its development 

and growth was fully established by the Seventh 

Day Adventists as an educational center in the 

mid-1890s. After a conference of the 

denomination in Dallas in 1893, a committee was 

formed to locate an appropriate area in Texas. 

In 1894 the General Conference of the Seventh 

Day Adventists chose over 800 acres near Johnson 

County for its ministerial training school and a 

new town was born—a post office was constructed 

and the name Keene was chosen. A ten-acre block 

with streets on all four sides was surveyed for the 

new school, while the remaining land was plotted 

for sale to residents. The school opened its doors 

to fifty-six students on January 7, 1894. Known 

first as Keene Industrial Academy, the thriving 

school added two years of college courses and 

became Southwestern Junior College in 1916. The 

name was eventually changed to Southwestern 

Union College in 1963 and became Southwestern 

Chapter V ✦ 37

❖ 

Top, left: Today, students at 

Southwestern Adventist University 

hail from over thirty-five states and 

thirty countries with thirty-seven 

undergraduate majors, twenty-six 

minors, master's degrees in business 

and education, and four 

undergraduate degrees. 


Top, right: The Herbert M. and 

Ivanette Woodall Hopps Musem and 

Welcome Center is located on the 

campus of Southwestern Adventist 

University and serves as a 4,000 

square foot community/visitor center 

filled with eclectic exhibits and 

historic items dating from the 

university and town’s beginnings. 


Below: A historical marker stands at 

the site of the famed Menefee Family 

Reunions of Rio Vista. 


other.” Townspeople welcomed Old Betsy, the first 

train into the area on December 20, 1902. 

By the 1950s a population of over a thousand 

had made the peaceful town their home, many 

working among the town’s major industries at the 

time in numerous broom making shops, baked 

goods, and a large church furniture factory. In 

2000, Keene’s population was over five thousand. 

Vance Reed, who served as the town’s first 

mayor from 1955 to 1958 once wrote of his 

beloved community, “So Keene it was, and 

Keene it is, and whatever may come to vex us, 

we are satisfied and we point with pride to the 

keenest town in Texas.” 

LILLIAN 

It has been written that “the story of Lillian 

and Pleasant Point are so intertwined that it 

would be impossible to write about one without 

writing about the other. The original village of 

Pleasant Point was founded around 1875, 

though settlers had erected the local church 

here as early as 1870, and included a post office, 

mill, drug store, and a storehouse. At the turn of 

the century, the International and Great 

Northern Railroad established it further from 

the town and a new community began to grow. 

Lillian was founded in 1902 when J. W. and 

Lillian Cunningham sold a section of land to G. J. 

and Lillian Renfro to establish the town along the 

International-Great Northern Railway. Within its 

first year, the town included its first business 

establishment, a chili stand known as the White 

Elephant, a school, a drug store, and two 

churches. Its post office was established in 1904 

and a blacksmith shop, livery stable, bank, barber 

shop, grocery store, hardware store, furniture 

store, and a hotel supported the young pioneer 

families of Lillian as the town prospered and grew. 

A fire destroyed many of the local businesses 

within the community in 1917. The town’s 

population reached 350 by the 1920s and was 

numbered at over 100 in 2000 and today lies 

within the Alvarado Independent School 

District. The town is also home to the historic 

Pleasant Point Cemetery. 

RIO 

VISTA 

The town of Rio Vista, Spanish for “river 

view,” was settled in 1885 as Grange Hall near 

the Nolan River and Mustang Creek. The area 

welcomed its first family, Henry Briden and his 

wife, in 1849 and quickly drew other pioneer 

settlers such as Meredith Hart, Wesley Smith, H. 

K. Hughes, L. G. Pipes, and Richard Bennett. 

Among Rio Vista’s legendary early families was 

the Menefees. Texas Ranger Laban Menefee first 

came to the area with a Republic of Texas land 

grant for territory in Ellis County. He left five 

hundred acres of pristine land west of Rio Vista to 

his sons, H. F. and W. O. Both served as members 

of the Texas Cavalry before W. O. became a circuit 

riding minister and traveled throughout Johnson 

County. He was among the original signers of the 

petition to create the county and helped select 

Cleburne as its permanent county seat. H. F. 

remained on the farm and grew cotton and corn. 

Rio Vista grew to nearly two hundred residents 

by 1896 and included a post office, several stores, 

a lumberyard, and a steam gin and corn sheller. 

The public school opened that same year and, by 

the early 1900s, Rio Vista was the home of 

churches, schools, a prosperous bank, meat 

market, saloon, general store, cotton gin, livery 

stable, and blacksmith shop. Three trains were 

soon making their way through the bustling town. 

A 1914 fire devastated much of Rio Vista’s 

economy as many homes and businesses around 


❖ 

Top to bottom: 

Downtown Rio Vista in the early 

twentieth century. 


the area were lost. The Cleburne Enterprise 

reported that “waterworks totally destroyed 

almost all of the business houses in ashes, many 

residents crippled financially, some practically 

ruined. Rio Vista is sweltering under a hot 

summer sun. Stunned by their sudden loss, the 

plucky citizens are taking account of their 

condition and preparing to raise from the ashes of 

their ruins a great Rio Vista…they are determined 

to pin their faith to Rio Vista…and build a bigger 

and better town where the many ashes today are 

smoldering the ruins of their fortunes.” 

Cotton crops and dairy farms sustained its 

citizens during the difficult era of renewal 

and they slowly rebuilt their beloved and 

historic community. 

Throughout the twentieth century, Rio Vista 

was the home of one of Johnson County’s most 

historic businesses, First State Bank. Its unique 

presence is well-known and remains woven into 

the lives of many across the area. 

The Cowpasture Bank started officially 

January 4, 1921, as Guaranty State Bank under 

the leadership of C.H. Coffman, Ed Ball, and 

Lowell Smith, Sr., who was also the bank’s first 

employee. Later in the 1920s the name changed 

to First State Bank and remained known by that 

name until the bank sold to Wells Fargo in 1999. 

Around 1927 or 1928 Lowell Smith, Sr., 

bought substantially more stock from the others 

and became head of the bank. The bank survived 

the Great Depression, but many banks did not. It 

did very well during and after World War II and 

began to grow in the late 1940s and 1950s. 

Lowell Smith, Jr., came on board as a bank 

officer in the late 1950s. 

The bank experienced substantial growth 

during the 1960s and the name Cowpasture 

Bank became known throughout the local area 

as well Texas and the nation. The air strip on 

Smith Ranch, adjoining the bank, was used for 

light aircraft. Customers and the bank received 

a lot of notoriety as a result. 

The 1980s were a substantial challenge as oil 

prices moved to record levels and then dropped 

to very low levels. Even though the area was not 

in the oil patch at that time there was fallout and 

The Smith ranch home was built in 

1887 by John Wesley Smith, Lowell 

Smith, Jr.’s, great-grandfather. Shown 

are (from left to right): Lowell Smith, 

Sr., Merrimon Smith, Alice Menefee 

Smith, Esther Smith (baby), and 

Maggie Van Zandt. The Smith 

operation began in July of 1887. John 

Wesley Smith and Ann Cooper Smith 

built their home (current home of 

Lowell Smith, Jr., and wife Shirley 

Segars Smith) and worked hard to 

establish themselves. They operated 

with cattle, wheat, corn, feed and 

cotton. Lowell Smith, Jr., is the fourth 

generation to own and operate the 

ranch. The Smith home and ranch are 

on the National Register of Historic 

Places. In November 1987 the 

Smith family received a certificate 

and gate marker recognizing the 

property as a Texas Century Ranch 

due to its continuous operation by the 

same family for more than one 

hundred years. 


Lowell Smith, Jr., commented on the 

legacy of First State Bank in 2010, 

“Our bank did very well in eighty 

years of serving the area. We had a lot 

of wonderful employees who made it 

all work. I wish we had time to name 

each and every one. We also had a lot 

of wonderful customers who stayed 

with us during the difficult times in the 

1930s and 1980s. I feel we did make a 

difference in the community and I am 

very thankful for the opportunity to 

have been a part of nearly fifty years 

in this great institution.” 


Chapter V ✦ 39

❖ 

Above: A busy day in downtown 

Venus, 2010. 

PHOTO BY ERIC DABNEY 

Bottom, left: Venus Middle School and 

High School, 2010. 

PHOTO BY CLAIRE DABNEY.. 

Bottom, right: The Methodist Church 

Building Committee laid the 

cornerstone for their church in Venus 

in 1925. The church remains near 

downtown Venus in 2010. 

PHOTO BY CLAIRE DABNEY. 

banking became a very difficult thing to manage. 

But again, the bank came through as the town did 

during the 1930s and, although Texas 

experienced a considerable number of bank 

failures and reorganizations, everyone made it 

through the difficult time. 

The bank continued to grow and became 

well-known as the largest bank in the area south 

of Fort Worth when it was sold to Wells Fargo. 

At the time of sale, First State Bank had three 

branches in Godley, Burleson, and Cleburne. 

First State Bank also had a trust department 

located in Cleburne. 

Rio Vista has remained a successful agricultural 

community producing cotton, corn, milo, wheat, 

and peanuts. Cattle and horse ranches have also 

played an important role in the economy of the 

area, while the rerouting of Highway 174 through 

the town led to a population boom in the 1950s. 

A new post office opened in 1969 and the 

population of the community reached nearly 700 

by the end of the twentieth century. 

VENUS 

Formerly known as Gossip and Midway, the 

town of Venus began to welcome settlers in the 

late 1850s but lots were not officially established 

until J.C. Smyth purchased 80 acres to create the 

town in the late 1880s. Smith named the site 

Venus and a post office was opened in 1888. 

The Santa Fe Depot opened in August of 1895 

and history records that Venus was among 

Johnson County’s most prosperous towns by the 

1890s. It included many businesses, several 

churches, a grad school, over 30 residential 

homes, and Burnetta College, which was built for 

$5,000 in 1896 and remained open to students 

until 1906. The college enrolled students from 

first grade to college age and included one 

dormitory for girls and one for boys and a fourstory 

building and bell tower. By 1910 the 

building had been torn down and a brick school 

built in its place, which later became a part of 

Venus’ local public school plant. 

Many considered the town the cotton capital of 

the world at the time and, by the early 20th 

century, citizens of Venus welcomed several banks 

and their own weekly newspaper, the Venus 

Express, founded by Sam Brazwell in 1912. Though 

the town’s population originally included a mere 10 

homes in 1890, the town boomed to some 2,000 

residents by the early 1900s and was considered 

one of Johnson County’s largest communities. The 

Great Depression that swept across America 

brought a great decline in the area, but recovered in 

the 1940s and again included some three hundred 

residents and many businesses. 

The town’s historic ambience was eventually 

chosen as the backdrop for a scene in the Oscaraward-winning 

movie, Bonnie and Clyde, starring 

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, in 1967. The 

town was also featured in an episode of Walker, 

Texas Ranger in the mid-1990s. By the end of the 

twentieth century, the town had expanded into Ellis 

County but its picturesque town square, including 

many businesses, was destroyed by fire in 1999. 


TEXAS TIMELINE 

• 1500s: Spanish explorer Luis de Moscoso Alvarado makes his way across the area. 

• 1700s: French pathfinder Pedro Vial enters the area. 

• 1736: France and Spain claim their boundaries between the Louisiana territory and New Spain. 

• 1775-1783: The American Revolutionary War. 

• 1801: Philip Nolan is killed near present-day Rio Vista. 

• 1803: The Louisiana Purchase is made by the United States; present-day Texas remains a part of 

New Spain. 

• 1804: U.S. President Thomas Jefferson decides that the boundary of the Louisiana Purchase 

extends to the Rio Grande. 

• 1810-1821: Mexican War of Independence from Spain. 

• March 16, 1828: General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne is born in Ireland. 

• 1835-1836: Texas Revolution to gain independence from Mexico. 

• March 16, 1836: The Republic of Texas is officially established. 

• September, 1836: Texas votes in favor of annexation to the United States, but the request is 

denied. 

• February 18, 1845: The United States Congress passes a resolution offering statehood to Texas. 

• July 4, 1845: Texas Congress and convention delegates meet to choose between annexation to the 

United States or independence recognized by Mexico. Annexation is approved. 

• December 29, 1845: Texas celebrates its legal entry into the Union. 

• 1846-1848: Mexican War ensues over the boundaries of westward expansion. 

• 1847: The Barnard brothers establish an Indian trading post along the Brazos River. 

• February 2, 1848: Mexican War officially ends with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe 

Hidalgo. Texas is annexed to the United States and the boundary of the Rio Grande is established. 

• 1849: Henry Briden and his family become the first permanent settlers of what will become 

Johnson County. 

• 1849: William Balch stakes a claim near what will become Johnson County’s first town, Alvarado. 

• 1852: Settlers arrive in Elm Grove, now present-day Keene. 

❖ 

“Wild Frontier, Trail Dust, and Rails” 

was commissioned by Howard Dudley 

and designed and painted by Stylle 

Read in 2009. The historic outdoor 

mural depicts the epic journey of 

Johnson County into the twenty-first 

century and highlights many of its 

famous pioneers and noteworthy 

events. The mural is 216 feet long and 

took over three years to complete 

along the brick wall that faces the 

historic Wright Building near 

downtown Cleburne. 

Texas Timeline ✦ 41

• 1853: William Balch and G. H. Sigler lay out 

the town of Alvarado and Johnson County’s 

first church is built in the area. Settlers establish 

the former town of Beulah. The town of 

Cross Timbers is established. 

• 1854: Johnson County is created and organized. 

The first steel rails to enter Johnson 

County come to the town of Venus. John 

Whitmire names the town of Grandview. 

• August 7, 1854: Johnson County elects its 

first officials. 

• 1855: Wardville, the third town established 

in Johnson County, is chosen as the Johnson 

County seat. 

• August 16, 1855: The first official meeting is 

held in the courthouse at Wardville. 

• October 4, 1856: Buchanan is established 

and the Johnson County seat is moved to 

Buchanan from Wardville. 

• 1858: The first county jail is erected in 

Johnson County. The former towns of 

Noland’s River and Rock Creek open their 

post offices. 

• 1861-1865: The American Civil War. 

• November 30, 1864: General Patrick 

Cleburne dies in a Civil War battle at 

Franklin, Tennessee. 

• 1866: The former town of Center Mills is 

established. Col. Middleton Johnson dies. 

• 1867: Cattle drives begin along the 

Chisholm trail. 

• March 1867: Johnson County seat is moved 

from Buchanan to Camp Henderson, known 

today as Cleburne. 

• July 4, 1867: Texas State Legislator Samuel 

Graham suggests that Camp Henderson be 

renamed Cleburne. An election soon 

changed the name. 

• 1868: Hugh is established by Henry 

Wilkinson, who names the former town after 

his grandson. The town of Sand Flat opens its 

Baptist church. 

• October 26, 1870: Johnson County’s first 

brick courthouse is built. 

• 1870: The town of Cross Timbers opens its 

post office. The former town of Trueloves, or 

Truloves, is settled by Lemuel B. Truelove 

and his brother Jonathan Richard. 

• May 1871: Cleburne is incorporated. 

• 1872: The former town of Bethany is settled 

by Hymrick Hooker along the Nolan River. 

• 1873: The former town of Barnesville, established 

in 1853 by the Barnes brothers, opens 

its post office. 

• 1875: The former town of Pleasant Point, one 

of the first communities in Johnson County, 

is established. The former town of Antioch 

opens its school. 

• 1877: The former town of Stubblefield opens 

its post office. 

• 1878: The former town of Bethesda erects 

its church. 

• 1879: The post office is opened in Bono. 

• 1880s: The former town of Freeland opens 

its post office. Settlers establish the former 

town of Bruce. Hopewell is established. 

Settlers establish the town of Goatneck. Dr. 

Tom Childers establishes Klondike along the 

Brazos River. 

• 1880: The Alvarado Bulletin, founded by 

newspaperman A.J. Byrd, begins publication. 

• 1881: The Missouri Pacific Railway arrives in 

Alvarado and in Grange Hall, now present 

day Rio Vista. Land is purchased for the city 

of Burleson. 

• June 6, 1882: Santa Fe Gulf lines purchase an 

incomplete track from Dallas through Cleburne. 

• 1882: Joshua is established. Cleburne greets 

its first train at the city’s depot. 

• 1883: The former town of Equestria opens its 

post office. 

• 1885: Alvarado is incorporated. The former 

town of Buel opens its post office. 

• 1886: Godley is established. 


• 1887: The former town of Parker opens its 

post office. 

• 1888: Venus, formerly Gossip, opens its 

post office. 

• 1891: Grandview is incorporated. 

• 1892: The first reunion of Civil War participants 

occurs at the Johnson County Pioneers 

and Old Settlers Reunion in Alvarado. 

• 1893-94: Keene is established by Seventh- 

Day Adventists as a ministerial-training 

school is built and opened in the area. 

• 1897: Professor W. Burrus Head organizes 

Grandview Collegiate Institute. 

• 1898: The Santa Fe Shops are established in 

Cleburne, one of the largest railroad shops on 

the entire Santa Fe line. Construction of the 

Shops is completed in 1899. 

• 1902: Lillian is established. The MKT 

Railroad arrives in the former town of Egan. 

• 1904: The Greater Cleburne Carnegie Players 

is founded. 

• 1911: Construction begins on the interurban 

line, the Cleburne Division, in Johnson 

County. Construction of the Interurban 

Depot is completed at Burleson. 

• 1912: The city of Burleson is incorporated. 

• April 15, 1912: Johnson County Courthouse is 

destroyed by fire. 

• September 1, 1912: The Interurban line 

through Johnson County opens to passengers. 

• November 28, 1913: The current Johnson 

County courthouse is completed. 

• August 1914: Fire destroys much of downtown 

Rio Vista. 

• November 14, 1914: The last recorded cattle 

drive along the Chisholm Trail occurs in far 

southwestern Johnson County. 

• 1917: Fire destroys much of downtown 

Lillian. The towns of Stubblefield and 

Greenbrier combine their schools to establish 

Greenfield. 

• 1920: First State Bank, known as the 

“Cowpasture Bank,” opens in Rio Vista. Fire 

destroys much of Grandview and the city 

soon rebuilds. 

• October 1, 1928: Johnson County debuts its 

only daily paper, The Cleburne Times-Review. 

• 1930: Cleburne’s first railroad ticket agent, 

J. P. “Jack” Wright, retires after fifty years 

of service. 

• April 30, 1931: The last run for the interurban 

car of the Cleburne Division makes it 

way through Johnson County. 

• 1934: The last electric car along the interurban 

line ends its service in Burleson. 

• 1936: Tris Speaker, former member of the 

state champion Cleburne Santa Fe Railroad 

baseball team, is inducted into the National 

Baseball Hall of Fame. 

• 1941: Cleburne State Park opens. 

• 1945: One of Johnson County’s oldest cotton 

gins, near the former towns of Happy Hill 

and Cahill, closes. 

• 1948: Santa Fe’s sleek new train, Texas Chief, 

goes into operation. 

• 1959: Cleburne Yellow Jackets became State 

3A Football champions under Coach Brooks 

Conover. 

• 1963: William Layland donates his vast collection 

of ethnographic items to create 

Cleburne’s Layland Museum to be housed in 

the city’s historic Carnegie Library building. 

• 1967: A scene from the Oscar-winning 

movie Bonnie and Clyde is filmed in downtown 

Venus. 

• 1974: Johnson County’s first Hill College 

campus opens in Cleburne. 

• May 1977: Southwestern Union College in 

Keene becomes Southwestern Adventist 

College. 

• 2010: Cleburne debuts its newly renovated 

and expanded Conference Center; the Lowell 

Smith, Sr., History Center debuts in downtown 

Cleburne. 

Texas Timeline ✦ 43

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SUGGESTED READING 

Barton, Marjorie. Leaning on a Legacy: The WPA. Oklahoma Heritage Association, 2008. 

Beard, Mike. Preserving a Part of Johnson County History. Burleson Historical Foundation. 

Block, Viola. The History of Johnson County and Surrounding Area, 1970. 

Bradley, Glenn D. The Story of the Santa Fe. Omni Publications, Palmdale, California, 1995. 

Burleson Historical Committee. Burleson: The First One Hundred Years (1881-1981). Taylor Publishing, 1981. 

Byrd , A. J. History and Description of Johnson County and Its Principal Town, 1879. 

Carlton, Jack. History of Johnson County, Texas. 

Carlton, Jack. Johnson County History, Books I-IV. 

Gregg, Josiah. Commerce of the Prairies. 

Griffith, Robert. www.burlesonhistory.com 

Guinn, Ernest. “A History of Cleburne, Texas,” master’s thesis, 1950. 

Handbook of Texas Online, www.tshaonline.org 

Hearth Notes, the newsletter of Layland Museum, Cleburne, Texas, 2009. 

Historical Advisory Committee of Rio Vista. Rio Vista in Review (1884-1984). 

Johnson, Walter. “Brief History of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Lines,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 24 (1946), p. 340 

McCorkle, Nelle. “A History of Education in Johnson County, Texas,” master’s thesis, 1932. 

Memorial and Biographical History of Johnson and Hill Counties, 1892. 

Mims, Mollie. Image of America - Cleburne. 

Mims, Mollie. Johnson County History, 1985. 

Miltenberger, Reverend Gordon. The Church of the Holy Comforter, 1971. 

Proctor, Jack. “Four Roads, Interurban Line Shape Transportation Story,” Johnson County Century Program, Cleburne Public Library, 1954. 

Riegel, Robert E. The Story of the Western Railroads, from 1852 through the Reign of the Giants. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 

Nebraska, 1964. 

Schwartz, Dorothy. Early Alvarado and Johnson County Histories compilation. 

Watson, John W. History and Lore of Cleburne and Johnson County, Texas, 2008 

Watson, John W. “Reclaiming the Fort Worth to Cleburne Interurban Car,” Cleburne Times-Review, Cleburne, Texas (March 29, 2010) 

Wilson, Maureen and Jackson, Jack. Philip Nolan and Texas: Expeditions to the Unknown Land, 1791–1801. 


❖ 

Morning dawns through the colorful stained glass dome and into the interior of the Johnson County Courthouse in 2010. The courthouse was restored in 2007 with major funding 

made possible through the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program of the Texas Historical Commission. 


SHARING THE HERITAGE 

Historic profiles of businesses, organizations, and 

families that have contributed to the development 

and economic base of Johnson County 

Lee Products, Inc. ...........................................................................46 

MCR Oil Tools, Inc. ........................................................................50 

Best Value West Pharmacy................................................................53 

Johnson County Special Utility District ..............................................54 

Joshua Independent School District ....................................................57 

Cleburne Eye Clinic ........................................................................58 

Southwestern Adventist University.....................................................60 

Grandview Bank .............................................................................62 

City of Burleson .............................................................................64 

Leland’s Industries ..........................................................................66 

Friends of the Johnson County Historical Commission ...........................67 

City of Cleburne.............................................................................68 

Cleburne Livestock Auction ..............................................................69 

Sharing the Heritage ✦ 45

LEE PRODUCTS, 

INC. 

Raymond Lee always said: “If you aren’t 

growing, you’re going backwards.” 

And backwards is one direction his company— 

Lee Products, Inc.—has never ventured in its more 

than four decades in operation. 

currently making; Lee, a farrier by trade, 

founded the new company in hopes of a more 

consistent income throughout the year. Shoeing 

horses kept him very busy in the spring and 

summer, but left much to be desired the rest of 

the year. 

❖ 

Above: Where Lee Products began, 

August 1968. 

Right: Raymond Lee. 

Bottom: Lee Products’ first 

office space. 

Specializing in farm and ranch supplies, 

metal manufacturing, raw materials, machining, 

laser cutting, ornamental iron products, and 

welding, Lee Products, Inc., was founded in 

1968 in Cleburne, Texas, by Raymond Lee and 

wife, Juanita. 

After giving his boss his two weeks notice 

and explaining that he could “make more 

money in the shade of a tree” than he was 

To remedy the situation, the Lees built a 

shop in which he could do welding during 

the slow seasons. The shop was fairly small 

in the beginning—just a 720-square-foot 

building with a dirt floor—but still big enough 

to house a cutting torch, welding machine and 

a host of hand tools. There was even a little 

room to shoe horses indoors when the 

weather outside did not cooperate. His first 

welding endeavors and the foundation from 

which his business continued to boom over the 

next four decades were the construction of 

gates, cattle feeders and fireplaces for his local 

horse customers. 

Today, Lee’s business requires every inch of 

its expansive sixteen-thousand-square-foot 

shop, which houses all the latest machines and 

technology to perform state-of-the-art tooling 

and metal fabrication. Special services provided 

include shearing, breaking, punching, welding, 

rolling, cutting, and machining. In keeping up 

with demand and the latest in technology, new 

machines are added constantly—for example, a 

120-ton iron worker was added in 2006, a 

4,000-watt Amada laser in 2007, a 14-foot 

CNC Amada press brake in 2008, and in 2009, 

a CNC Mill computerized and automatic 

machine as well as a 6-foot-by-5/16-inch 

plate roll. 


“And we fully intend to keep growing and 

adding new machinery to speed up the 

fabrication process, to lower the price of the 

finished product and to fulfill our customers 

needs as completely as possible,” Lee said. 

In addition to the colossal metal fabrication 

shop, the Lee Products facility also includes a 

2,300-square-foot sales office and showroom, 

from which the Lee Products’ sales team 

works diligently to help each customer from 

the beginning of a project to the very end. 

It is from here that they also operate the farm 

and ranch equipment side of the business, 

providing products such as cattle guards, 

corral panels, bunk and creep feeders, 

economy troughs, mineral feeders, round 

bale feeders, stall feeders, fence supplies, 

galvanized wire, gates and gate openers, just 

to name a few. Clients can buy straight from 

the showroom floor or order online at 

www.leeproductsonline.com. The company 

ships nationwide. 

In total, the company currently has sixteen 

employees, each of whom—just like the 

❖ 

Above: The original Lee Products 

facility was built in stages in the 

1970s and ’80s. 

Below: An office building was added 

to the facility in 1993. 


❖ 

Lee Products built a new facility in 

1999 following the expansion of the 

highway to four lanes. 

many employees that Raymond Lee has 

hired throughout the years—is treated with 

the utmost respect, with loyalty being 

rewarded with the same. Lee, in fact, has 

never laid anyone off, even during tough 

business times. 

“Once the banks were calling notes on a lot 

of companies and people around the area,” says 

son Bill Lee, who today helps his father run 

the business, “Lee Products was one of those 

companies, but Dad did not let that hold him 

down. He didn’t lay anybody off and he 

borrowed money from as many people as 

he could to bail the company out. He has 

since paid everyone back and the company is 

booming today. It has been that kind of 

perseverance and steadfast loyalty that has made 

our company the success it is today.” 

A true family business in every sense, 

Raymond and Juanita were pleased to have 

their children and grandchildren—Kenny Lee, 

Bill Lee, Randy Branham, Rose Lee Branham, 

Sonia Lee and Kay Lee Harwell—join them 

throughout the years, each heavily involved 

in the growth process and each working at 

various stages of development. Kenny and Bill 

started out especially young and have been 

an integral part of the business almost since 

the beginning. 

“I can remember one time in the early years, 

a customer came by to check on the progress of 

his truck bed which we were custom building 

for him, “ Raymond reminisces. “He was very 

unhappy to find a fourteen year old boy welding 

on his truck and asked the boy to stop 

immediately. He then came over and found me 

and demanded to know why a kid was working 

on his truck bed. 

“I told him that the boy was my son, Bill, and 

that Bill could weld better than most men,” Lee 

chuckled. “And when he insisted on seeing 

proof, Bill grabbed a piece of channel and 

proceeded to lay a clean bead. The customer 

didn’t say another word. He simply turned and 

walked away.” 

Of course, being so young when they 

started out had its advantages and 

disadvantages, the senior Lee added. The 

advantage was that they became experts in 

their trades before they were even out of 

high school, but the disadvantage was that “kids 

will be kids” and they sometimes chose fun 

over responsibility. Seldom did they get away 

with it, however. 


“We had a standing order for fifty gates per 

month which Bill and Kenny were responsible 

for completing,” Raymond said, the corners 

of his lips curling into a smile. “However, 

sometimes when it was really hot, Kenny 

would convince Bill to visit the local lake for a 

dip. Unfortunately, one time when they went, 

the fifty gate quota had not been met, and when 

they returned, they were met by what has been 

called the quickest belt in the west!” 

“Yes, dad always ruled with a firm hand,” 

adds Bill. “But, all of us agree that he was always 

fair and is most definitely the reason we all have 

such a strong work ethic today.” 

In addition to being a steadfast part of the 

Johnson County area business community, 

Lee Products, Inc., is also dedicated to the 

communities in which they live and work, 

providing regular support to the Joshua and 

Covington Chapters of the Future Farmers of 

America, Jump Rope for the Heart, the Wings 

of Hope, Rio Vista Elementary, Plum Creek 

Elementary, the March of Dimes, the Johnson 

County Sheriff’s Posse Rodeo, Future Pro Bull 

Riders and Little Britches Rodeo. 

For more information on Lee Products, Inc., 

visit them in person at their headquarters at 4308 

East Highway 67 in Cleburne, Texas 76031 or 

visit online at either www.leeproductsonline.com 

or www.leemetalfab.com. 

The family of Lee Products, Inc., wish 

to dedicate this company profile to Juanita 

Lee who worked alongside husband Raymond 

to give Lee Products a firm foundation on 

which to build and then contributed greatly 

throughout the years to help the company grow 

into the successful business it is today. Juanita 

passed away in the spring of 2009. 

“Lee Products, Inc., would not have been the 

success it is without my mother and my 

father,” Bill says. “She was immensely loved and 

is greatly missed.” 

❖ 

Three generations of the Lee family 

(from left to right): Kenneth Lee, 

Randy Branham, Raymond Lee, 

Juanita Lee, and Bill Lee. 


JOHNSON 

COUNTY 

SPECIAL 

UTILITY 

DISTRICT 

❖ 

Johnson County Special Utility 

District office on South Highway 

171, Cleburne. 

A history of people helping people. There is 

no better way to describe the Johnson County 

Special Utility District in Cleburne, Texas. 

It all began in the spring of 1964 when a 

group of men held a meeting at the Sand Flat 

Baptist Church to discuss the possibility of 

supplying water for general farm use and 

domestic purposes to the people residing in the 

rural area. A steering committee was formed to 

pursue the necessities in making this happen. 

On the committee were Jerome H. Cribbs, Bob 

Elder, C.M. Chambless, W. B. Basham and Joe L. 

Roten. Among others present at the meeting was 

John Tracy, who lived near Liberty Chapel. Tracy 

asked Bob Childress, who was just starting his 

own consulting firm in Cleburne, to attend the 

meeting. He felt that Childress’ engineering 

background would be a resource for beginning 

the development of a community water system. 

During this era, the Farmers Home 

Administration (FmHA) began funding rural 

water systems similar to the governmentsupported 

rural electric cooperatives in earlier 

years. The dedication of these men to help the 

rural community prompted them to begin 

knocking on doors. They presented the idea 

of having a water cooperative to serve rural 

residents in this general area of the county. 

Folks were skeptical at first as this new concept 

was hard to grasp. But, while many thought that 

individual wells worked fine, the vision was 

much greater. The strategy was to provide an 

economic benefit for the many that would 

ultimately reside in Johnson County. The 

steering committee proposed an initial $50 

membership fee to have a meter installed 

and join the new member-owned, nonprofit 

organization. It made sense to create a rural 

community water system to serve those that 

shared as a stakeholder in the organization. 

In April of 1965, the Articles of Incorporation 

was signed to form a Water Supply Corporation. 

The same five men that had been on the initial 

steering committee signed the document. Those 

listed were also the first Board of Directors: 

President Jerome Cribbs; Vice President C.M. 

Chambless; Secretary/Treasurer Bob Elder; Joe 

L. Roten and W. B. Basham. 

With slide rule in hand, Childress’ first 

engineering project was also the beginnings of 

a lasting relationship with this unique water 

system. A pioneer in engineering rural water 

systems, he designed the original layout and 

prepared construction plans for the pumping 

facilities and distribution system to jumpstart 

the operations of the new Johnson County 

Water Supply Corporation. It all happened 

during a time when the federal funding program 

arrived, coupled with the advent of PVC plastic 

pipe that had been newly approved for potable 

water use. The growth of rural community water 

in the United States was on its way and Johnson 

County, Texas was on the leading edge of the 

new era. 

In 1966, an application for the corporation’s 

first loan of $106,000 from FmHA was made 

and approved to construct the first two pump 

stations and fifty-eight miles of water lines 

and to additionally install 250 meters and one 

Trinity well. Rural participants working together 

to financially support and donate easement were 

the key in getting this community project on its 

feet. The first office was at 108 West Henderson 

in a small section of the building where Cleburne 

Eye Clinic is located today. Frances Parnell was 

hired as office secretary and later became 

manager. A few years later, the office moved to a 

building on Caddo Street across the street from 

the old Carnegie Library where Cleburne Floral 

is today. 

Over the next few years, connections to the 

system grew steadily. Bill Parnell became 

the manager and Ulas “Sprout” Solomon 

was the superintendent of operations. The 

success of the organization was attributed to 

the dedication of both these men. Parnell served 

as the general manager from 1973 to 1988. 

Solomon was the operations superintendent 

from 1973 to 1997. Parnell and Director Elder 

were also integral players in the beginnings of 

the Texas Rural Water Association. Both men 


served as president in the early years of the state 

association. Parnell went on to serve as president 

of the National Rural Water Association. 

The West Prairie Water Supply Corporation 

was a sister system serving to the northwest of 

the county. After a few years of sharing office 

space and personnel, they consolidated with the 

water co-op in 1972. The name was officially 

changed to the Johnson County Rural Water 

Supply Corporation and served a combined 

1,300 connections. 

In 1977 the corporation purchased facilities 

of the small water system, Nolan River Water 

Supply Corporation. Its service area was 

generally around the Rio Vista and Bono 

communities Later that year, the corporation 

implemented a plan to effectively interconnect 

all facilities. This was done by drilling two more 

water wells and constructing two additional 

pumping plants. It consolidated three separate 

distribution systems with twelve inch and ten 

inch transmission lines. Funded by FmHA, 

construction on this project was completed in 

1978. Plans were being made to find another 

location for the headquarters of the corporation. 

In 1980 a fine facility was constructed and 

completed with money received from a grant. 

The entire operation moved into its present 

location two miles south of Cleburne on South 

Highway 171, the Hillsboro Highway. As the 

rural community grew, it was always a challenge 

to avoid having inadequate water supply or 

distribution facilities. There was always a 

dynamic need for additional water wells, storage, 

pumping, and transmission lines. Serious issues 

with water supply and distribution problems 

peaked during the summer of 1980. It was the 

hottest and driest on record. New service for 

applicants was suspended for an extended 

period until a major capital improvement 

program could be initiated. Approval of this 

project and loans in the amount of $2 million 

were finally received from the Farmers Home 

Administration in the early part of 1981. 

Construction of the facilities was completed in 

August 1982. 

In 1984, with 5,116 rural families being 

served, the growth trend for the county climbed 

steadily. The corporation and the Johnson 

County Fresh Water Supply District, supplying 

❖ 

A one-million gallon elevated storage 

tank located at the site of the first well 

and pump station. 


the Joshua area, worked together to find an 

alternate water supply source. The well water 

would not continue to sustain the growth in 

Johnson County. They partnered with the 

Brazos River Authority to evaluate the feasibility 

of treating and transporting surface water from 

Lake Granbury to the two systems twenty-four 

miles away in Johnson County. Having a reliable 

source to supplement the wells was becoming 

increasingly urgent. Groundwater levels in the 

northwest part of the county were experiencing 

serious decline. 

By 1989, Johnson County was receiving 

treated surface water from Lake Granbury. The 

Brazos River Authority issued public bonds to 

fund the construction of the Surface Water and 

Treatment System (SWATS) with an initial 

treatment capacity of 3.5 million gallons per day 

(MGD). The corporation was the largest user of 

the plant. Johnson County Fresh Water District, 

Acton Municipal Utility District and the city of 

Granbury contracted to take treated water. The 

SWATS plant was fitted with desalinization 

facilities to remove the salt that existed in the 

Brazos River. In 1999 the SWATS plant capacity 

was increased to 5 MGD. The SWATS participants 

agreed that it was time to consider a sizeable 

expansion of the plant to 15 MGD. A couple 

of years later, the SWATS plant expansion was 

completed at a cost of $30 million. 

In March 2000 the Board of Directors voted 

to convert Johnson County Rural Water Supply 

Corporation to a special utility district (SUD). 

Enabling legislation in the 1980s allowed for 

member-owned water supply corporations to 

become a political subdivision of the state by 

becoming a special utility district. The Board’s 

decision was based on significant cost savings 

for the ratepayers, like issuing tax-exempt 

bonds for capital projects, sales tax-exemption, 

and being eligible to join the state-sponsored 

insurance risk pool to avoid the high cost of 

public market insurance premiums. Finally, in 

2004, the process was state-approved and the 

organization began operating as the Johnson 

County Special Utility District. 

In 2005 the Johnson County Fresh Water 

Supply District, also referred to as FWD for 

freshwater district, was providing water and 

wastewater service for the citizens of Joshua and 

the immediate surroundings. The FWD had 

experienced several years of tough economic 

times and the JCSUD staff spent considerable 

time with FWD officials trying to help 

streamline their costs. The next year the FWD 

Board of Directors approved a resolution to merge 

with the District and make application with the 

state to initiate action to consolidate. In April 

2007 the District began managing the day-today 

operation of the FWD. Merging the Joshua 

area connections with the District helped all 

ratepayers to better maintain stable water rates. 

As of 2009, the District served a population 

over 40,000 with 14,500 connections in four 

counties. It is the largest special utility district in 

the state of Texas. Terry Kelley has served as 

general manager since 1992. Since that time, the 

District has been successful in securing 12 MGD 

of available water for treatment from the Brazos 

basin. More recently, a good working relationship 

has been cultivated with the city of Mansfield 

and the city of Grand Prairie, and an additional 

15 MGD is contracted for available purchase 

from these entities in the Trinity basin. The 

District has finally accomplished a comfortable 

position in regional planning with water supply 

capacity for the foreseeable future. By 2011, the 

District plans to have 5.5 million gallons of 

elevated storage capacity to move water through 

almost 900 miles of distribution pipelines. 

Current Operations Manager Ronnie Nichols is 

the longest-tenured employee having started 

with the District in 1978. At that time there 

were only four employees in the Operations side 

of the business. Today, Nichols provides oversight 

for eighteen operators, and is very much a part of 

dealing with new projects and development in 

the system. 

Unlike the average rural water provider, the 

District has an extended staff of professional 

positions, including office manager, accounting 

manager and district engineer. In 1968 the 

budget income was $37,000 in contrast to 

2008’s income of $14.7 million. In a span of 

forty-five years, the District has evolved into a 

regional water provider for the greater Johnson 

County area. Granted, the rural water system is 

not as rural as in the beginning. But, looking 

back over the years, the legacy of the old water 

co-op continues today. 

And, it is still an effort of “People 

Helping People.” 


BEST VALUE 

WEST 

PHARMACY 

Through several name and location changes, 

one thing has remained constant: For more 

than a quarter of a century, Best Value West 

Pharmacy has consistently provided the perfect 

prescription for the healthcare needs of the 

people of Burleson and Johnson County. 

“We are your neighborhood drug store,” 

says owner Wayne West. “We are always ready 

with sound advice for anything from a bee 

sting and proper doses of medicines to flu 

shots and hormone therapy. We are locally 

owned and pride ourselves on knowing the 

families we serve.” 

Best Value West was actually founded in 

1982 as Bransom’s Pharmacy and located as a 

department of Bransom’s Grocery in Burleson. 

A decade later, it was purchased by Ron’s 

Pharmacy, Inc.—a respected family pharmacy 

chain founded in 1969—and was eventually 

moved into its own building at 124 West 

Renfro. Ron’s was eventually renamed Best 

Value Pharmacies, with all the pharmacies 

being owned and operated by local 

pharmacists, most of whom worked for the 

neighborhood drug stores they would 

later buy. 

Though West himself is now a partner in the 

Best Value corporation and, in fact, currently 

serves as president of the corporation’s eleven 

area pharmacies, his first actual contact with 

Burleson dates back to 1957 when as a 

pharmacy student he went to work for his 

mentor, Gayle Hilley. His first job was at 

Hilley’s pharmacy in nearby Mineral Wells. 

After Hilley died in 1986, he moved to 

Burleson and became director of all seven 

Hilley pharmacies. When the Hilley stores 

were sold in 1989, West joined forces with 

Ron Cheyne, first as an employee, then 

business partner and, finally, president of Best 

Value Pharmacies. 

I am thankful to be a part of Best Value 

Pharmacies, Inc. and to have Best Value West 

where I am able to serve as a pharmacist,” West 

said. “With the help of my family—my wife, 

Betty, and my daughters, Lydia, Marianna, 

Chere and Amy—as well as a host of very 

dedicated employees, Best Value West has 

become a vital part of the Old Town section 

of Burleson. We’re happy to be a part of 

that; happy to serve our community and 

our neighbors.” 

For more information, please visit 

www.mybestvaluerx.com. 

❖ 

Above: Current location of Best Value 

West Pharmacy at 124 West Renfro in 

Burleson, Texas. 

Below: Wayne West, RPH. 


MCR OIL 

TOOLS, 

INC. 

He was a man on a mission. 

His name: Mike Robertson. 

His mission: to design and develop a nonexplosive 

oil well pipe-cutting tool that would 

not only prove more effective, but would also be 

safer and less costly than others on the market. 

The result: A multimillion-dollar global 

organization which markets and sells the 

Radial Cutting Torch (RCT) TM , today used 

in every oil-producing country on the planet, 

and is the undisputed world leader in piperecovery 

tools. 

But even though the result has been 

extremely successful, the journey has been far 

from easy. As a matter of fact, it has been quite a 

roller coaster ride for Robertson and his 

company, MCR Oil Tools, Inc. 

Robertson’s story really begins in the summer 

of 1982. The country was in the throes of a severe 

recession and like many, he—an engineer—was 

out of a job, laid off until the economy improved. 

Times were indeed tough, but Robertson 

proved tougher, using his downtime to work on 

an idea he had pondered for several years—a 

way to cut pipes inside an oil or gas well 

without the costly and often dangerous 

disadvantages presented by the explosive jet, 

chemical and mechanical cutters on the market 

at the time. 

And, so Robertson went to work. He drew 

on every bit of knowledge he had acquired 

throughout his life from things he learned while 

working in his father’s Illinois transmission shop, 

to knowledge gained as a weapons mechanic 

during a stint in the Air Force, to the education 

he received as a mechanical engineering graduate 

of the University of Texas at Arlington, to his vast 

knowledge of mechanical devices and oil wells 

learned in an array of engineering jobs. 

He believed so much in his idea that he used 

the last of his family savings to pay a house 

payment and talked his way into seeing the 

president of SIE Corp., a Fort Worth oilfield 

equipment company. He laid out his idea and 

asked for an advance to build and test a 

prototype. He walked out the door with a check 

for $13,000 and began work on his design. 

His idea was to burn powdered metals in a 

small steel cylinder to create a blow-torch effect. 

The tool, later to be named the Radial Cutting 

Torch, would consist of only six parts. He 

fashioned a slender steel tube as the outer body 

and designed a nozzle that would slip inside 

and direct fire against pipe walls. He then 

concocted a blend of powdered metals that 

would burn steadily to a peak temperature of six 

thousand degrees and slice through pipe walls 

in a fraction of a second. 


By December 1982, Robertson’s 

invention had passed its first test in 

a test well outside of Fort Worth. 

Shortly, after SIE agreed to a two-year 

licensing agreement, committing the 

company to purchase 600 of the new 

RCTs for $180,000. Just seventy-five 

tools into the deal, however, the 

company decided to shift the project 

to one of its other businesses—a 

manufacturer of the very chemical and 

jet cutters that the RCT threatened to 

replace. Fearing the company would shelve his 

invention to keep it off the market, Robertson 

dissolved the SIE contract toward the end of 1984. 

He then recruited six Fort Worth area 

businessmen to put up $250,000 to fund further 

development. He bought a piece of land in 

Johnson County and converted an old barn into 

a machine shop. Unfortunately, his finances 

forced him to also take an outside job as well. 

This left only nights and weekends to work on 

his invention. 

And even though working on the RCT was a 

labor of love for Robertson, burning the candle 

at both ends soon took its toll. In 1985, not too 

long after he had begun working in his new 

shop, an exhausted Robertson was using a power 

drill to prepare for a test when he noticed that it 

was throwing off sparks inside the tool body. 

The next thing he knew his invention had fired 

and molten metal erupted from the tube, searing 

the skin off his left hand, melting his shoes and 

nearly destroying his shop. 

For many, this may have been the end. But 

not for Robertson. Within just a few weeks, he 

was back at work and, by 1987, believed he had 

fine-tuned the RCT enough to find a company 

to complete development and begin marketing. 

But everywhere he went it seemed research 

managers wanted to examine his invention. At 

some of the companies, in fact, research 

executives who had been working on their own 

cutters with little success found feeble excuses 

for why his invention would not work. Yet 

others simply wanted to buy his patents. 

Finally in 1988, Robertson found a partner 

he felt he could trust and signed a twenty-five year 

development and exclusive marketing contract 

with Schlumberger Technology Corporation. 

Schlumberger had one year to perform its 

own testing after which a production program 

was to begin. Schlumberger, however, did no 

development work and refused to honor the 

license agreement. A frustrated Robertson sued the 

company for breach of contract in September 

1990 and a court battle ensued. 

The lawsuit was a lengthy one and set off a 

series of misfortunes for Robertson including 

four burglaries at his office in which boxes of 

RCT-related documents and personal financial 

records were rifled through. 


❖ 

The Egan facility burned by arson on 

August 22, 1992. 

Meanwhile, he licensed Apex Electric Wireline 

Service Corporation to use and market the 

RCT. Robertson seemed to be on the verge of a 

breakthrough when Mobil, the nation’s second 

largest oil company at the time, began talking to 

Apex about possibly using the RCT on a high 

profile refurbishing project. 

Then the worst disaster to date struck. 

Robertson’s machine shop burned to the 

ground, destroying all of his tools as well as 

design changes he had been drafting for nearly 

a year. A state fire marshal’s report concluded 

that the origin of the fire was undetermined and 

suspicious. Worse yet, the shop was uninsured. 

“That was the biggest devastation of all,” 

Robertson said in a 1996 Dallas Morning News 

interview. “Twelve years of work was gone. I 

thought, my God, what am I going to do now?” 

At the same time, though, he says, he was 

convinced that God would not have brought him 

that far so that he could fail. 

And then, just days after the fire, things 

began looking up again. The president of 

Apex showed up with a check for $14,000 as 

prepayment for more RCTs. Robertson used that 

money along with credit cards to buy new 

equipment and begin crafting new dies from 

memory. A few days later in what he describes 

as “a message from heaven,” the Department of 

Energy awarded him a $100,000 grant to finish 

developing the cutter. He soon set up shop in a 

temporary facility in Fort Worth and within a 

year was working out of a permanent location in 

Burleson. In 1996 a jury awarded Robertson a 

$71-million verdict against Schlumberger. 

Sustained by his courtroom victory, Robertson 

licensed several companies to market the RCT 

nationally and internationally. Among those 

companies was Houston’s Baker Atlas who 

temperature and pressure-tested all sizes of 

the RCT in 1998 and 1999. These tests proved 

very favorable and gave Robertson additional 

knowledge to continue fine-tuning and perfecting 

his invention. For example, it became clear during 

these tests that the black powder igniters 

Robertson had been using to initiate his torches 

were causing damage to the torches themselves. 

So MCR developed a non-explosive thermal 

generator to replace the powder igniters. This 

thermal generator has solved many of the 

problems associated with the RCT in the early 

days of development. 

In 2000, in an effort to further control and 

improve the quality of its products, MCR decided 

to quit using outside vendors to produce its 

machine parts and instead purchased all the 

equipment needed to manufacture its own parts 

and products. 

Then, in 2002, MCR licensed Halliburton 

Energy Services and Weatherford to use the 

RCT system in their global operations. These 

companies—both adamant about training and 

procedure—have been a driving force behind 

the success of the RCT. This success has led to 

several other development programs such as the 

MCR and Weatherford partnership, which has 

successfully developed a family of high pressure 

RCTs to cut everything from 1.5 inch tubes to 

5.5 inch pipes. 

MCR has also developed some extended reach 

torches. These torches are undersized cutters 

capable of cutting larger diameter pipes—a very 

useful feature given the configuration of many 

modern wells. 

To keep pace with its growth, MCR’s physical 

facilities have grown as well. Up until December 

2004, the company was located in three 3,000- 

square-foot warehouse buildings in Burleson, 

but in January 2005 it moved to its present 

location—a 17,000-square-foot manufacturing 

facility and warehouse in Arlington. Additionally, 

the company has a facility in Egan, which houses 

the company’s production and test facilities 

as well as a satellite office. This year, MCR is 

expected to complete construction of a new 

twenty-one-thousand-square-foot facility on the 

property adjacent to its Arlington facility. The 

company employs forty people. 

For more information on MCR Oil Tools, 

Inc., please visit www.mcroiltools.com. 


The Joshua Independent School District, 

organized in 1890, is committed to developing 

responsible, productive citizens through 

educational excellence. 

To carry out this mission, the district strives 

to provide safe schools for all students and 

staff, improve the level of student academic 

performance, and provide effective and efficient 

use of personnel, materials, resources, and 

facilities to meet the present and future needs of 

a changing enrollment. 

JISD schools, accredited by the Texas 

Education Agency, include five elementary 

schools with grades Pre-K through 6: Caddo 

Grove, A. G. Elder, North Joshua, Plum Creek, 

and H. D. Staples; Loflin Middle School, which 

serves grades 7 and 8; and Joshua Accelerated 

Learning Center and Joshua High School, which 

serve grades 9 through 12. 

JISD instructional programs are designed to 

meet individual needs and maximize student 

success. Curricular offerings include remedial, 

regular, advanced, and honors courses. Programs 

for special populations include At-Risk, Drug- 

Free, Title I, English as a Second Language, 

Bilingual Education, Gifted and Talented, 

Special Education, and Career and Technology 

Education (CTE). 

Through Career and Technology Education, 

students learn and apply academic and specific job 

skills required for entry level, mid-management, 

and entrepreneurial positions. 

JISD is also proud of its special education 

program that provides students with disabilities 

with instructional and related services appropriate 

to their unique educational needs. 

The district offers a music curriculum that 

includes general, vocal, and instrumental 

music. Choral music, concert and marching 

bands are available to students beginning in the 

seventh grade. 

A wide variety of 

clubs and organizations 

are available at the various 

campuses, and the 

athletic program offers 

a range of activities 

designed to develop the 

student academically, 

emotionally, physically, 

and socially, while 

developing exemplary 

personal habits. 

The Joshua Independent School District serves 

4,750 students in the Burleson, Crowley, Joshua, 

Egan, and Cleburne communities of Johnson 

County. The 76-square-mile area encompasses a 

population of approximately 15,000. The district 

has 650 employees and operates with a 2009–2010 

school year budget in excess of $36 million. 

JOSHUA 

INDEPENDENT 

SCHOOL 

DISTRICT 

❖ 

Above: Joshua ISD in the early 1900s. 

Below: Joshua ISD today as 

represented by the new athletic 

stadium facility. 


CLEBURNE 

EYE CLINIC 

❖ 

Above: Cleburne Eye Clinic today. 

Below: 110 West Henderson, the 

location of the Cleburne Eye Clinic, as 

it appeared in the 1890s. 

When Dr. Jack Burton hung out his shingle 

in 1949, he had a clear vision of what he wanted 

for the Cleburne Eye Clinic. And today, more 

than a half-century later, that vision has not only 

been attained, but continues to grow stronger 

with each passing year. 

Indeed, that same small practice that started 

out with Burton and one employee—the doctor 

himself answering the phone—is today a stillgrowing 

practice of five doctors and thirtyseven 

employees serving North Central Texas 

at three locations. Employees of the Cleburne 

Eye Clinic still walk through the same front 

door that the founder himself walked through 

in 1949. However, the office—located at 110 

West Henderson in Cleburne—has expanded 

from its initial two rooms into the entire 

building, which sprawls over a half city block. 

The practice’s second location, Bosque Eye 

Clinic, has been operational in neighboring 

Meridian since 1989 and Family Eye Clinic in 

Midlothian since 1990. 

Having long ago traded in the handheld 

instruments of days gone by for the most 

sophisticated computerized laser instruments in 

the industry, each office features state-of-the-art 

testing facilities at which doctors provide the 

best vision and medical eye care possible in a 

personal and caring environment. The doctors 

prescribe glasses and contacts to meet their 

patients specific vision needs; manage the visual 

development of children with conditions such 

as amblyopia; treat eye infections and injuries; 

and diagnose and manage glaucoma as well as 

eye-related complications of systemic diseases 

such as diabetes. Along with highly qualified 

surgeons, they also manage patients undergoing 

cataract surgery, LASIK, and retinal disease, and 

handle eye emergencies. 

The practice also offers an extensive 

collection of high quality eyewear with the most 

up-to-date frames as well as a full gamut of 

lenses from progressive bifocals, anti-reflective 

treatments and polarized sun lenses to the 

thinnest and lightest lens materials on 

the market today. Contact options include 

correction for farsightedness, nearsightedness, 

astigmatism and even bifocal wearers. 

Although Dr. Burton has since passed, the 

doctors who continue to fulfill his vision 

include Joe Martin, Karl Wedel, Heath Bullard, 

Cory Brown, and Traci Kuykendall. 

A native of Roby, Texas, and a graduate of the 

College of Optometry at the University of Texas, 

Dr. Martin is the senior partner, having joined 

the practice in 1972. He is certified to practice 

therapeutic optometry and is an optometric 

glaucoma specialist. As dedicated to his community 

as he is to his profession, Martin is 

very involved in community, civic and church 


activities. He has served as a church pianist 

since age fourteen and frequently plays for 

weddings, banquets and conferences. 

Dr. Wedel, a 1970 graduate of the University 

of Houston College of Optometry, joined the 

practice in 1977. He is trained in the treatment 

and management of ocular disease and has 

received an ocular therapeutics certificate as 

well as an optometric glaucoma specialist 

certificate. He has co-managed LASIK surgery 

since 1990 and, like Dr. Martin, takes civic 

involvement seriously. He was a member of the 

Grandview Independent School District Board 

for thirteen years, served as a past president of 

the Cleburne Lions Club and currently holds 

several positions at his church. 

Dr. Kuykendall joined the firm in 1998 and 

is also a graduate of the University of Houston 

College of Optometry. While at the university, 

she gained experience through internships in 

various areas of Houston as well as at Northwest 

Eye Associates in Seattle, Washington. She 

gained additional professional experience at a 

private practice in Houston where her training 

centered on vision therapy and ocular muscle 

training for children with special visual needs. 

She is a member of the American and Texas 

Optometric Associations. 

A native of Cleburne, Dr. Bullard graduated first 

in his class from the College of Optometry at the 

University of Houston. He joined the Cleburne 

Eye Clinic in 2000 and is therapeutically licensed 

in the diagnosis and treatment of eye disease and 

certified to treat glaucoma. He is a member of the 

Texas and American Optometric Associations as 

well as the Beta Sigma Kappa Optometric Honor 

Society. He is an active member in the Midlothian 

Lions Club. 

Dr. Brown, also a graduate of the University 

of Houston College of Optometry, practiced for 

three years in Fort Worth before joining the 

practice in 2004. He is licensed as a therapeutic 

optometrist and glaucoma specialist. 

Please visit www.greateyedoctor.com for 

more information. 

❖ 

Top: Dr. Martin using the OCT. 

Above: The optical area. 


SOUTHWESTERN 

ADVENTIST 

UNIVERSITY 

For more than 115 years, there has been 

an educational institution in the peaceful 

community of Keene, Texas, whose mission has 

been two-fold: to educate the minds and 

strengthen the spirits of all of its students. 

Indeed at Southwestern Adventist University, 

academics and spirituality go hand-in-hand. It 

is a place where people from more than 30 

nations and 35 states gather to worship, study, 

serve and play together, helping the school live 

up to one of its most profound slogans—The 

Whole World. One Campus. 

did they find the perfect 800 acres located 

just five miles east of Cleburne, they personally 

financed the $8,000 needed to purchase it. 

❖ 

Clockwise, starting from the top: 

The computer lab is equipped with 

forty-two computers. 

The computer lab doubles as 

a classroom. 

Chan Shun Centennial Library is 

creating connections for Southwestern 

students to the world of scholarly, 

spiritual, and recreational resources. 

The John & Lottie Mabee Reading 

Hall, a comfortable place to sit 

and read. 

“If you know anything at all about our university, 

you probably know our secret,” University 

President Eric Anderson said in a recent interview. 

“Students come to Keene, Texas, not for the 

weather, nor the football team, nor parties. They 

come here for a real education. They enjoy personal 

attention in small classes from real teachers, 

not teaching assistants—incredibly talented and 

devoted teachers who are here because they 

believe God called them here. Nobody gets lost in 

the crowd and lives are changed every year.” 

Southwestern Adventist University was the 

brainchild of a group of Adventists that lived 

near Dallas in the late 1800s. With a mission to 

build a school in Johnson County, the group 

chose a committee to locate property. Not only 

Indeed, even though it was a time in America 

when railroads were going broke, banks were 

closing and businesses failing, these hearty 

Adventist families converged on the land, 

bringing all their earthly possessions in covered 

wagons, and together cleared the land, built 

houses, and on January 6, 1894, completed 

the school they had founded and begin building 

just the year before. Initially, the school 

doubled as a church hosting 65 church members 

on the weekend and 56 students throughout 

the week. 

Firmly believing that classroom learning and 

work experience compliment each other for the 

most quality education, the school was first 

named Keene Industrial Academy. Junior college 

level work began being offered in 1916 and the 

name was changed to Southwestern Junior 

College. The name was changed again to 

Southwestern Union College in 1963 and the 

school finally became known as Southwestern 

Adventist College in 1977. Graduate level work 

was first offered in 1987 and nine years later the 

school earned the university designation it 

holds today. 


Southwestern Adventist University has 

been accredited by the Southern Association 

of Colleges and Schools since 1958. It is 

additionally accredited by the General 

Conference Accrediting Association of SDA 

Schools, Colleges and Universities; the 

International Assembly for Collegiate Business 

Education; the Texas Education Agency; the 

Texas Board of Nurse Examiners; and the 

National League of Nursing. 

financial aid is available to most students and 

campus jobs are provided for anyone who is 

willing to work. 

❖ 

Clockwise, starting from the top: 

The Microgarden, a computer lab in 

the library, easily accessible to 

all students. 

The lecture classrooms are 

comfortable and amenable 

to learning. 

The lecture classrooms are equipped 

with state-of-the-art equipment. 

The student lounge, visit with friends 

or study. 

The student lounge, eat a snack in this 

comfortable western-styled lounge. 

Current enrollment exceeds 800 students 

participating in 37 undergraduate majors and 

26 minors; master’s degrees in business and 

education; and four undergraduate degrees. 

The student-to-faculty ratio is one teacher for 

every twelve students. 

With a mission to offer its quality higher 

education in a Christ-centered environment 

shaped by Seventh-day Adventist and Christian 

values, Southwestern also offers enriching 

worship services, mission trips, week of prayer, 

community outreach, Christian music concerts, 

drama clubs, dormitory chapel services and 

many other opportunities for students to put 

their faith into action. 

Although the university prides itself on 

having one of the lowest tuitions of any 

Adventist university in the United States, 

“At Southwestern Adventist University, we 

strive to broaden the student’s intellect and 

strengthen their spiritual dimension, while 

contributing to their social growth, fostering 

attitudes and practices of healthful living, 

developing a wholesome respect for the dignity 

of labor and instilling a sense of selfless 

service,” President Anderson said. “We strive to 

educate for life, not merely for a vocation.” 

For more information on Southwestern 

Adventist University, visit www.swau.edu. 


GRANDVIEW 

BANK 

❖ 

Above: One of the original bank 

advertisements from the 1890s. 

Below: The bank’s first “Statement of 

Condition” dated October 1890. 

Over the past century-plus, generation after 

generation of Grandview and Johnson County 

citizens have entrusted to and invested their 

money in Grandview Bank. 

The fourth oldest state-chartered banking 

institution in Texas and the oldest bank in 

Johnson County, Grandview Bank was officially 

founded as First National Bank of Grandview on 

July 3, 1890, by a host of local citizens 

including T. F. Pittman, Thomas F. Mastin, F. M. 

Weathered, W. G. Davis, S. S. Ramsey, C. I. 

Coffin, R. N. Hill, C. M. Yater, W. H. Gilliand, J. 

R. Hoxie, S. D. Rainey, Jr., and Philip Walker. 

The bank opened with a capital of $50,000. 

Many decades later, it changed from a 

national bank to a state bank and in 1963 

became known as First State Bank of Grandview. 

By 1997 the bank had once again come under 

local ownership and in 2007 was renamed 

simply Grandview Bank—a designation it 

retains today. It remains the only bank in the 

county with a locally based ownership and 

delivers an unmatched level of personal service 

to each and every customer, says President and 

CEO Robert Stewart. In keeping pace with the 

times, the bank complements that personal 

service with the most modern features and 

services available in the banking industry and 

has three full-service banking offices, one each 

in Grandview, Cleburne and Alvarado. 

“While we never stray from our commitment 

to personal service, we realize that technology 

is reshaping the way that individuals and 

customers conduct business. With this in 

mind, we are pleased to make Internet banking 

with online bill pay one of the many services 

available to our customers. With this, our 

customers have access to their account 

information twenty-four hours a day, seven 

days a week,” Stewart said. “But, if their 

preference is still to deal directly with a 

member of the bank’s staff, we are more 

than happy to be at their service. Plain and 

simple, our goal is the same as it has been for 

over a century—to provide the finest in 

hometown banking.” 

In addition to priding itself on providing 

the best service possible, Grandview Bank also 

prides itself on preserving its history. In fact, 

the interior of its main branch in Grandview— 

the very site on which the bank was initially 

founded—was fully renovated in 2007. But, 

instead of giving it a more updated look, 

the goal was a reverse-makeover of sorts, a 

renovation that rewound the appearance of 

facility’s interior all the way back to the late 

1800s and early 1900s. 

“When you step inside, we want it to be 

like you are stepping back in time,” said 

Beth Bowman, the bank’s vice president. “The 

interior of the bank itself was restored to look 

very much like it did when it was first founded. 

We have many original and historical documents 

such as the bank’s original stock book and 

original stock ledger on display in an exhibit 

case in our lobby. We also have our very first 

statement of condition dated October 1890 and 

a host of other documents which are now more 

than a century old.” 

To recreate the look and feel of a bank in 

the late 1800s, Bowman said that many objects 

from the bank’s early days—things such as an 

old barred gate and a large wall clock both used 

in the original building back in 1890—were 

restored and used in the renovations. The clock, 

Bowman says, still keeps perfect time and is 

still used to open and close the bank every 

single day. 

Lending a bit more to the bank’s historical 

look and the project that actually jump started 

the renovation to begin with is the vast and 

colorful collection of historic Texas flags 

hanging on the bank’s main wall. This idea was 


❖ 

Left: One of the oldest known 

photographs of the original interior of 

the bank lobby. Note the clock is the 

same one used today. 

inspired by a small bank in Clarendon, Texas 

and fueled by Stewart, who also happens to 

be a self-proclaimed flag buff. The bank’s 

floor also dons a big Texas-star mosaic and 

the ceiling is made of tin much like the one 

in the original bank building. 

For more information on Grandview Bank, 

visit www.grandviewbank.com. 

Below: Today’s lobby, after the most 

recent renovation. The vault, clock 

and barred gate are original to 

the 1800s. 


CITY OF 

BURLESON 

Burleson was born out of the Missouri- 

Kansas and Texas Railway’s need for a good 

source for water between Fort Worth and 

Alvarado. Today, the city of 34,000-plus still 

provides the necessities—good water and quality 

neighborhoods—but also coveted amenities, 

including more than two dozen parks, a toprated 

golf course, more than $30 million in 

family and sporting venues scheduled to open in 

2010, a variety of shopping and dining options, 

and a plan to preserve what makes Burleson the 

choice for families and businesses who want to be 

a part of Johnson County’s fastest growing city! 

Burleson was well settled shortly after the Civil 

War. The first warranty deed was dated Oct. 10, 

1881. The deed was conveyed from the railroad’s 

manager, General G. M. Dodge, to M. W. Bailey 

for just $40. Dr. Rufus C. Burleson, a well-known 

Texas Baptist minister and president of Baylor 

University at Waco, is the City’s namesake. 

Then, Burleson serviced fledgling communities. 

The railroad shipped cord wood cut from the 

Cross Timbers area, just west of Burleson, to cities 

on the open plains to the south. 

Burleson built its own privately-financed 

school in 1889. In 1909 the school burned and 

the Burleson Independent School District was 

formed. In 1910 the first three-story brick 

school was opened at 201 South Dobson, which 

is now home to the Academy at Nola Dunn. 

The district has grown from 

a one-room schoolhouse to 

three high schools, two middle 

schools and 10 elementary 

schools with more on the 

drawing board. 

The City has come a long 

way since 1881. But the 

strong sense of community 

you feel when you cross that 

city limit line has not changed. 

The City is a stone’s throw 

from Fort Worth, but it is still 

known for its low crime rate, 

pro-business climate, available 

labor force, and easy access 

to major interstates, railways 

and airports. Burleson is the 

place to be as it celebrates its 

centennial in 2012. 


With 34,000-plus calling Burleson 

home in 2009, Burleson boasts more 

than 26 square miles of rolling hills, 

lakes, and parks and, it is one of the 

fastest growing communities in the 

Metroplex. By 2011, Burleson is expected 

to host more than 290,000 residents 

within a 10-mile radius. 

The Old Town entry to the city at the corner 

of Renfro Street and I-35W is now Renfro 

Square. In addition to office buildings, the 

square includes a park, fountain, and sidewalk 

bricks to honor veterans. The Military Veteran 

Tribute is hosted at Veteran Park in Renfro 

Square every November. 

Old Town is the place to be for 

major festivals—Founders Day, Boo 

Bash, and Christmas—as well as the 

Fourth of July Parade, Christmas 

parade and the Hot Sound of Summer 

concert series. 

As the City approaches its centennial, 

the first business park, a 159-acre 

master planned industrial business 

park on I-35W, between Bethesda 

Road and FM 917, is underway. The 

park is within five miles of Fort 

Worth’s Spinks Airport, which boasts 

an air traffic control tower and four 

runways. Two major rail lines (Union 

Pacific and the Burlington Northern 

Santa Fe), now serve Burleson. Local 

officials hope to add a commuter rail 

to the transportation options in the 

near future. 

The commuter-rail station and a 

580-acre mixed-use development are 

in the works. The vision is compact, 

walkable communities surrounding 

the station. Office, residential, and 

retail will exist in harmony with highdensity 

apartments and condominiums, 

lower-density townhomes, brownstones 

and bungalows. Buildings that 

integrate business and residential—retail 

on the street and homes on the upper 

level—are also in the mix. 

Burleson also hopes to welcome its 

first conference center soon, possibly at 

Hidden Creek Parkway and I-35W, next 

to Hidden Creek Golf Course. 

Burleson has come a long way since 1881, 

from a town that depended on other cities to a 

City that is among the most desirable places to 

live in the Metroplex. Come celebrate the 

centennial with us! 


LELAND’S 

INDUSTRIES 

The year was 1990 and Leland Ulrich, a 

sixteen-year-old Kentuckian with a true 

entrepreneurial spirit, had a vision for a portable 

storage building business. 

Leland was the first branch of the family tree 

to consider something other than farming. 

However, believing in his son, Leland’s father 

invested in the idea and for five years worked 

alongside Leland and his other sons. 

At first they specialized solely in portable 

storage buildings but, in 1992, after building 

several cabins at Jellystone Park in Kentucky, 

began to expand their menu of offerings. The 

family worked together for almost a decade 

before Leland relocated to Texas. 

Once in Texas, Leland and a former 

employee, Cornelius “Corey” Yoder, partnered 

up to re-launch the business that he had begun 

in Kentucky. When they first started out, it was 

just the two of them, their specialty being prefabricated 

decks, but by 2003 they had 

branched out into a vast array of portable 

storage solutions, modular backyard concepts 

and modular cabins. Their company was 

dubbed Leland’s Industries and they averaged 

about one portable building per week. Today, 

however, they employ approximately one 

hundred employees across their companies and 

average one portable building per hour, 

according to Leland. 

Leland’s Industries specializes in everything 

from garages, decks, painted sheds, log cabins 

and cabinettes to utility sheds, cottages, horse 

barns, metal sheds, storage barns, gazebos, and 

playhouses. Its customers are primarily in Texas 

and Oklahoma, but it delivers to the 

neighboring states as well. In the log cabin 

department, it offers cabin deliveries all over the 

United States. 

“Our products are so reasonably priced that 

sometimes, even with delivery charges, clients 

from locations much further away still find us 

the best option,” Leland said. 

For more information or to see the wide 

array of portable and pre-fabricated buildings 

Leland’s Industries has to offer, please visit 

www.lelandsindustries.com. 

In addition to Leland’s Industries, Leland and 

Corey and a third partner in Costa Rica, 

Nathanael Yoder, have several other successful 

business ventures in operation. From a coffee 

company, Javataza, LLC, and Corland 

Properties, a rental property management firm; 

to Hacienda Lecona, a landholding company 

in Costa Rica, and Lecona Real Estate. The 

trio is currently selling building sites at 

Santiago Springs, their own development 

venture and one of the most luxurious 

mountain home residential developments in 

southern Costa Rica. 


The 501(c)(3) Committee of the JCHC met 

on March 3, 2006 at 4:30 p.m. to discuss the 

creation of a non-profit organization to be 

known as the Friends of the Johnson County 

Historical Commission. The committee 

consisted of Bill Conover, Jackie Vinson, and 

Barbara Robinson, then the county treasurer 

of Johnson County. After submission of its 

report to the full JCHC, the creation of the 

Friends was authorized by the Commission in 

September of 2006. 

The purposes of the Friends of the Johnson 

County Historical Commission are: to provide 

private sector support and assistance to the 

Johnson County Historical Commission for 

projects recommended by the Johnson 

County Historical Commission, and for 

programs and activities to further the 

preservation, recognition, and appreciation for 

Johnson County’s Heritage; to promote an 

appreciation of and to educate the public 

regarding the heritage and history of Johnson 

County, Texas, and the importance of the 

historical preservation; and to benefit the public 

through historic education and by acquiring, 

restoring, and preserving historically and/or 

architecturally significant buildings and other 

properties for public use and/or viewing, and 

thereby preserving the heritage and historic 

and/or architectural character of Johnson 

County, Texas. 

On July 16, 2007, a roomful of Johnson 

County history buffs gathered at the home of 

Wilma Reed in Cleburne, Texas, to formally 

organize the Friends of the Commission. Bill 

Conover of Cleburne was elected the first 

chairman of the board of trustees. Other 

officers elected were: Jackie Vinson, vice-chair; 

Wilma Reed, secretary; and Michelle Griffith, 

treasurer. By September of that year, the 

Friends received formal recognition as a 

501(c)(3) charitable organization. Additional 

charter members present were Barbara 

Robinson, Dorothy Nash, Robert Griffith, and 

John Watson. By the end of that year, 

membership in the Friends of the Commission 

had grown to twenty-three. 

The first fundraiser sponsored by the Friends 

was held on December 1, 2007, at the ceremony 

rededicating the 1912 Johnson County 

Courthouse, which had recently undergone a 

historic renovation. Jack Carlton, one of 

Johnson County’s leading historians, donated 

thirty copies of his most recent book on the 

history of the county, for the Friends to sell at 

the event. The Friends also sold prints of a map 

of the State of Texas, c. 1848, which had 

originally been commissioned by German 

immigrant Solms Van Braunfels. The FOC’s 

second fundraiser was the “Old Jail Sale,” of 

items being discarded by the County, held in the 

summer of 2008—these had literally been 

stored in the old Johnson County Jail. With the 

proceeds, the first donation by the Friends was 

the purchase of a commode for the Doty house, 

Cleburne’s oldest standing home, and the 

property of Johnson County. 

Also in 2008, Billy Cate, then chairman of 

the JCHC, asked the Friends of the Commission 

to be the sponsoring organization for the 

publication of this book. The Friends 

commissioned this publication in the fall of that 

year. The process of collecting information for 

the publication of this book proceeded slowly 

and initial interest waned. However, late in 

2009, Conover recruited Kathryn Ann Murphy 

to complete this long-awaited project. Ann 

worked tirelessly over the next year to see this 

project to fruition. She contacted the publisher, 

coordinated gathering information and 

photographs, and secured many precious 

resources so that the author, Eric Dabney, could 

complete the book. 

As with all organizations, leadership changes 

over the years, and Mike Percifield was elected 

as the second chairman of the FOC in 2010. 

With Ann Murphy’s tenacious intensity, and 

Percifield’s enthusiasm, the Friends of the 

Johnson County Historical Commission worked 

successfully with the publisher to see this 

project to the end. 

The Friends of the Commission hope that 

you will enjoy this publication, and that it 

will aid the reader in having a better 

understanding of Johnson County’s wealth of 

history. Funds raised from the sale of this book 

will be used to further the purposes of the 

Friends of the JCHC. 

FRIENDS OF 

THE JOHNSON 

COUNTY 

HISTORICAL 

COMMISION 

BY BILL CONOVER 


CITY OF 

CLEBURNE 

The origin and growth of the city of Cleburne 

may be attributed to its role as a crossroads and 

transportation center. The site that became 

Cleburne was near one of the earliest Johnson 

County roads, an old wagon trail used by soldiers 

traveling from Fort Belknap to Fort Graham. 

Cleburne became a transportation center 

when the first railroad arrived in 1870 and the 

town was incorporated in 1871. 

Cleburne’s population reached 12,820 in 

1920, but the Great Depression had a 

devastating effect on the city’s economy and 

population declined. 

Proximity to the Dallas/Fort Worth region 

resulted in substantial growth in Cleburne 

following World War II. By 1990 the city had 

a population of 22,205, 40 manufacturing 

facilities, a new regional hospital, and a community 

college extension center. 

Visitors entering Cleburne from the west on 

State Highway 67 may witness the past brought 

back to life. The Chisholm Trail Outdoor Museum 

on the west bank of Lake Pat Cleburne is fast 

becoming the premier tourist attraction in this area. 

As you enter the outdoor museum you are greeted 

by Indian tepees and the largest life size silhouette 

cattle drive in the world. On the grounds as well is 

the oldest log courthouse in Texas. This historic 

old building, built in 1854, has been restored and 

is back in the place of its origin at Wardville, the 

first county seat of Johnson County. 

The most visible attraction from the highway 

is the 80-foot stone wall with the words 

“Welcome to Cleburne on the Chisholm Trail.” 

It features nine life size silhouettes of Chisholm 

Trail riders and Longhorn steers. Future 

attractions at the site will include a Stage Coach 

Station, Blacksmith Shop, Jail, Trading Post, 

school, and church. 

Other local cultural activities include a 

community theater group, and Layland 

Museum, both housed in a former Carnegie 

Library building. Residents enjoy eight 

municipal parks, Lake Pat Cleburne, the newly 

constructed Cleburne Golf Links, Cleburne 

State Park and Splash Station, the premiere 

venue for aquatic recreation in Johnson County. 

A local preservationist society, Save Old 

Cleburne, sponsors an annual Candlewalk and 

Tour of Homes during the Christmas season. 


Founded by the late Bill White and the late 

E. G. Burleson, the Cleburne Livestock Auction 

has been an integral part of the lives of Cleburne 

area farmers and ranchers since 1948 and it has 

been a part of Clyde Boyd’s life for more than a 

half-century. 

“Clyde and I both had grown up on farms 

in Oklahoma and—though he spent many 

successful years as a manager for a large 

Venetian blind company—he never lost his love 

for farming and livestock,” Jimmie Boyd, Clyde’s 

wife of sixty-four years, said in a 2010 interview. 

“In fact, it wasn’t long after moving to Cleburne 

in the 1950s that Clyde started helping out at 

the auction on Saturdays, setting the price to 

start the bids.” 

Although he just worked on weekends in the 

beginning, it was “just enough to get in his 

blood,” Jimmie said. Clyde worked consistently 

throughout the years, eventually becoming full 

time and continuing on after owner Bill White 

died leaving the business to his wife, Emma. It 

was from Emma White that Clyde purchased 

business in 1986. 

After retiring from Montgomery Ward in 

1984—just a couple of years before her 

husband officially purchased the business— 

Jimmie also went to work for the auction. 

At various times throughout the years, 

both of their children, Rebecca and Wesley, 

worked alongside them, making it a true 

family business. 

In its heyday, the 

Cleburne Livestock 

Auction ran 1,000 to 

1,500 cattle through its 

facilities each and every 

week, in addition to 

hosts of other livestock 

such as horses. It started 

out in a small frame 

barn on Country Club 

Road, but moved into 

much larger facilities 

on Highway 174 

South in 1950. It is 

here that the business 

still operates today. 

Though the cattle 

portion of the business 

ceased back in 2001 

due to decreasing demand as ranches began to 

be sold off to make way for land development, 

Cleburne Livestock Auction has remained 

busy with once-a-week horse sales. The Boyd 

husband and wife duo retired on December 30, 

2009, and have since leased out the business. 

Retired or not, however, the two can still be seen 

on the auction grounds lending a helping hand 

from time to time. That is what happens when 

something “gets in your blood,” Jimmie Boyd 

said with a smile. 

For more information on Cleburne Livestock 

Auction, call 817-996-9223. 

CLEBURNE 

LIVESTOCK 

AUCTION 

❖ 

Above: Clyde Boyd. 

Below: Clyde and Jimmie Boyd with 

children, Rebecca and Wesley. 


SPONSORS 

Best Value West Pharmacy ............................................................................................................................................................53 

City of Burleson ...........................................................................................................................................................................64 

City of Cleburne...........................................................................................................................................................................68 

Cleburne Eye Clinic .....................................................................................................................................................................58 

Cleburne Livestock Auction..........................................................................................................................................................69 

Friends of the Johnson County Historical Commission.................................................................................................................67 

Grandview Bank...........................................................................................................................................................................62 

Johnson County Special Utility District ........................................................................................................................................54 

Joshua Independent School District..............................................................................................................................................57 

Lee Products, Inc..........................................................................................................................................................................46 

Leland’s Industries........................................................................................................................................................................66 

MCR Oil Tools, Inc.......................................................................................................................................................................50 

Southwestern Adventist University ...............................................................................................................................................60 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

COURTESY OF ALICIA MOORE PHOTOGRAPHY. 

E RIC 

D ABNEY 

Eric was born and raised in Kremlin, Oklahoma, and received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of 

Central Oklahoma, where he now serves as an adjunct professor in the College of Education. He is the series editor for Bob Burke’s 

Commonwealth Publishing, is a contributing writer of over thirty publications of Lammert Inc.’s Historic Publishing Network, and is 

the co-author of Fearless Flight: The Adventures of Wiley Post, Historic South Carolina, Historic Rogers County, and The Life of Bill Paul. 

Eric and his wife have three daughters and live near Guthrie, Oklahoma. 

About the Author ✦ 71

For more information about the following publications or about publishing your own book, please call 

Historical Publishing Network at 800-749-9790 or visit www.lammertinc.com. 

Albemarle & Charlottesville: 

An Illustrated History of the First 150 Years 

Black Gold: The Story of Texas Oil & Gas 

Garland: A Contemporary History 

Historic Abilene: An Illustrated History 

Historic Alamance County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Albuquerque: An Illustrated History 

Historic Amarillo: An Illustrated History 

Historic Anchorage: An Illustrated History 

Historic Austin: An Illustrated History 

Historic Baldwin County: A Bicentennial History 

Historic Baton Rouge: An Illustrated History 

Historic Beaufort County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Beaumont: An Illustrated History 

Historic Bexar County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Birmingham: An Illustrated History 

Historic Brazoria County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Brownsville: An Illustrated History 

Historic Charlotte: 

An Illustrated History of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County 

Historic Charlotte County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Chautauqua County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Cheyenne: A History of the Magic City 

Historic Clayton County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Clermont County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Comal County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Corpus Christi: An Illustrated History 

Historic DeKalb County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Denton County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Edmond: An Illustrated History 

Historic El Paso: An Illustrated History 

Historic Erie County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Fayette County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Fairbanks: An Illustrated History 

Historic Fort Bend County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Gainesville & Hall County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Greenville: The Story of Greenville & Greenville County 

Historic Gregg County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hampton Roads: Where America Began 

Historic Hancock County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Henry County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hood County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Houston: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hunt County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Illinois: An Illustrated History 

Historic Kern County: 

An Illustrated History of Bakersfield and Kern County 

Historic Killeen: An Illustrated History 

Historic Lafayette: 

An Illustrated History of Lafayette & Lafayette Parish 

Historic Laredo: An Illustrated History of Laredo & Webb County 

Historic Lee County: The Story of Fort Myers & Lee County 

Historic Louisiana: An Illustrated History 

Historic Mansfield: A Bicentennial History 

Historic McLennan County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Midland: An Illustrated History 

Historic Mobile: An Illustrated History of the Mobile Bay Region 

Historic Montgomery County: 

An Illustrated History of Montgomery County, Texas 

Historic Ocala: The Story of Ocala & Marion County 

Historic Oklahoma: An Illustrated History 

Historic Oklahoma County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Omaha: An Illustrated History of Omaha and Douglas County 

Historic Orange County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Osceola County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Ouachita Parish: An Illustrated History 

Historic Paris and Lamar County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Pasadena: An Illustrated History 

Historic Pasadena, Texas: An Illustrated History 

Historic Passaic County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Pennsylvania An Illustrated History 

Historic Philadelphia: An Illustrated History 

Historic Prescott: An Illustrated History of Prescott & Yavapai County 

Historic Richardson: An Illustrated History 

Historic Rio Grande Valley: An Illustrated History 

Historic Rogers County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Santa Barbara: An Illustrated History 

Historic Scottsdale: A Life from the Land 

Historic Shelby County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Shreveport-Bossier: 

An Illustrated History of Shreveport & Bossier City 

Historic South Carolina: An Illustrated History 

Historic Smith County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Smyrna: An Illustrated History 

Historic Temple: An Illustrated History 

Historic Texarkana: An Illustrated History 

Historic Texas: An Illustrated History 

Historic Victoria: An Illustrated History 

Historic Tulsa: An Illustrated History 

Historic Wake County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Warren County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Washington County: 

The Story of Hagerstown & Washington County 

Historic Williamson County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Wilmington & The Lower Cape Fear: An Illustrated History 

Historic York County: An Illustrated History 

Iron, Wood & Water: An Illustrated History of Lake Oswego 

Jefferson Parish: Rich Heritage, Promising Future 

Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community 

Old Orange County Courthouse: A Centennial History 

Plano: An Illustrated Chronicle 

The New Frontier: 

A Contemporary History of Fort Worth & Tarrant County 

San Antonio, City Exceptional 

The San Gabriel Valley: A 21st Century Portrait 

Southwest Louisiana: A Treasure Revealed 

The Spirit of Collin County 

Valley Places, Valley Faces 

Water, Rails & Oil: Historic Mid & South Jefferson County 


$34.95 

LEADERSHIP SPONSOR 

Lee Products, Inc. 

About the Front Cover 

The historic Johnson County courthouses. From top 

to bottom: Wardville Courthouse of the nineteenth century 

(photo by Eric Dabney); the Courthouse of the early 

twentieth century (courtesy of the Layland Museum, 

Cleburne, Texas); and the courthouse in 2010 (photo by 

Mollie Mims). 

About the Back Cover 

The depots at Alvarado (courtesy of Michael 

Percifield); Cleburne; and Burleson 

ISBN: 9781935377368

Historic Johnson County

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