Vernon, Texas
Texas
The post office rejected this town's chosen name because too many Texas towns were already called Eagle something.
In 1880 the settlers here applied for a post office under the name Eagle Flat. The indigenous community had called the place Eagle Springs as far back as 1858, so the name had roots. The U.S. Post Office turned it down anyway. Too many Texas towns, the reply said, were already called Eagle something. So the settlers looked for a name nobody could object to and landed on Mount Vernon, George Washington's home. They dropped the mount and kept Vernon. Today about ten thousand people live here, and it is the seat of Wilbarger County. The second weekend of August brings a car show of models built between the 1930s and 1985. In May the Santa Rosa Palomino Club puts on a four-day rodeo. And in a ghost town fifteen miles north, riders still cross a river on horseback every spring.
This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
However, the U.S. Post Office rejected the name, saying too many Texas towns were already called Eagle something.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nearby, on the same roads
- Red River Valley Museum 1.2 mi Roy Orbison is one of the locally born celebrities whose photographs hang in this small Texas museum.
- Oklaunion Power Plant 8.4 mi A coal plant that burned Wyoming coal for thirty-four years is now the site of a four billion dollar green hydrogen project.
- Chillicothe, Texas 14.3 mi The electric starting gate that releases racehorses was invented by a man born in this town of about five hundred people.
- Electra, Texas 23.2 mi A rancher drilling for drinking water kept hitting crude oil, and the water came up undrinkable.
- Quanah, Texas 27.6 mi A man from this small Texas town is credited with saving Chartres Cathedral during World War Two.
- Acme, Texas 32.1 mi Miners digging gypsum here turned up mastodon fossils.