 |
|
Historical
Marker for Rock Front
Saloon |
|
(Now McDade Historical Museum) |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| In
1962, Mr. Marvin Bishop loaned the McDade Historical Society enough money
to purchase two buildings, the one pictured and the one next door. This
building, the Old Rock Saloon, built by San Jacinto Veteran, John
Dempsey Nash, is the oldest building in McDade and serves as the
McDade Historical Museum. The McDade Historical Museum
is right downtown in McDade, Texas. Located in beautiful northern,
Bastrop County, on U.S. Highway 290 between Austin and Houston, falling
within the Presidents' Corridor, between the Aggie A&M and the
Longhorn's T. U. Texas. Although McDade is now pastoral and serene,
what a place it must have been! McDade's early history is of
notorious gangs, outlaws, murderers, notch-cutters, hangings, dances,
saloons, vigilantes, stage robberies and especially the Shoot-out on
Christmas Day, when blood ran cold in the streets of McDade; the courts
ruled it "A Merciless Killing". It was where several
bodies were left dangling beside the road and anonymous graves appeared in
local cemeteries over night. These events help to record the dark
pages of McDade's history in the 1870s and 1880s, but there is also the
brighter side too, good honest people came bringing their families, early
business men rushed into town to make quick money, farmers came to settle
the land and plant crops. Many of the settlers were the finest of
citizens whose descendants still live in McDade today. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Miss Jewell Huddler and Retta Preston,
dedication of Historical Marker at Museum.