Chillicothe, Texas
Texas
The electric starting gate that releases racehorses was invented by a man born in this town of about five hundred people.
Clay Puett was born here in 1899. He invented the electric starting gate, the mechanism that holds racehorses and releases them all at once. For a town that now counts about five hundred and fifty people, that is not the only name on the list. Herschel Ramsey came out of Chillicothe and played professional football. Lew Williams sang rockabilly. Monroe Parker became a college president. The town itself is called the Iris Village, for the irises that grow all over it. The name Chillicothe came secondhand. A man named A. E. Jones chose it after his hometown in Missouri. The settlement grew up along Wanderer's Creek in the eighteen seventies, near the headquarters of a ranch called the R2. A post office opened in 1883, with Charles E. Jones as postmaster.
This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
(Hoyt) Clay Puett, born here in 1899, the inventor of Electric Starting Gate
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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