Local History
Texas Ghost Town Historical Markers: The Communities That Didn't Make It
Three Texas ghost towns left almost nothing behind but a roadside marker. Here's where to find Clara, Goforth, and the lost towns of Deaf Smith County.
Photo: Ashley Ross / Unsplash. An abandoned truck in rural Texas.
You're driving a farm road west of Burkburnett. Wheat fields on both sides, and then a lone brick church appears. A hundred years ago this spot was a whole town with a store, a school, and a post office. Texas has more than 16,000 historical markers, and plenty of them stand where towns used to be. RoadHistorical is a Texas historical preservation platform that helps you find these markers as you drive. This article walks through three Texas ghost towns and the markers that still tell their stories.
Clara: A German Colony Near Burkburnett
Ghost Town of Clara sits on State Highway 240, just west of Burkburnett in Wichita County. Herman Specht came to Galveston from Germany in 1870. In 1884 he married a wealthy widow named Clara. Then he started buying land across northern Wichita County. He ended up holding 21,000 acres.
In 1886 Specht platted the town and named it for his wife. He named the streets for Texas heroes. He donated land for the Trinity Lutheran Church and advertised for German colonists to move in. Clara grew to include a church, schools, a store, a garage, and a post office.
The town never had enough water. When the school merged with Burkburnett, families started leaving. The oil boom of the 1920s pulled the rest toward Wichita Falls. Good roads and cars made it easy to shop somewhere else. Today only the church, the rectory, and the cemetery remain.
You'll find the marker along SH 240, Burkburnett, TX 76354. Find it in RoadHistorical before your visit.
Goforth: Cotton Country in Hays County
Goforth grew up southeast of Buda in Hays County. James Taylor Goforth started the community in the 1870s and ran a general store on the site. That store did double duty. It was the social center and the bank for farm families across the area.
Business peaked between 1880 and 1906. The town had a drugstore, a doctor's office, a meat market, a stable, and a blacksmith shop. A post office opened in 1890 with Goforth as postmaster. The railroad bypassed the town, but Goforth kept going anyway.
The end came from the soil. Erosion and worn-out farmland brought heavy crop failures in 1925. A worm infestation the next year finished the job, and farmers abandoned the fields. The supply company closed with its stock still sitting on the shelves. Little is left of the townsite today.
You'll find the marker near Goforth Road, Buda, TX 78610. Find it in RoadHistorical before your visit.
Deaf Smith County: When the County Seat Packed Up
Ghost Towns of Deaf Smith County stands at the Deaf Smith County Museum in Hereford, up in the Panhandle. The marker makes a blunt point. Here the ghost towns outnumber the living ones.
La Plata was the star. It served as county seat and sat on the New Mexico to Amarillo road through the 1880s and 1890s. Then Hereford won the county government in 1898. Crews moved all 28 houses and businesses to Hereford, and La Plata was gone.
Other names faded even faster. Ayr lost the county seat fight in 1890. Post offices like Escarbada on the XIT Ranch, Dean, Mirage, and Kelso opened and closed within a few years. The Dust Bowl and hard farm years later emptied more Panhandle towns.
You'll find the marker at the Deaf Smith County Museum, 400 Sampson St, Hereford, TX 79045. Find it in RoadHistorical before your visit.
How RoadHistorical Finds These Markers
Ghost town markers hide on back roads, and it's easy to blow right past them. Discovery Mode fixes that. It notifies you as you drive near a marker, so you know to slow down and pull over. The AI Tour Guide answers the questions the plaque leaves out, like what happened to the people after the town died.
A lot of these sites sit far from cell coverage. RoadHistorical works offline, so the marker details and maps load even when your signal drops. You can plan a whole day of lost towns and never lose the thread.
Start Discovering Texas History Today
RoadHistorical is free to download on iPhone and Android. Download it here and turn on Discovery Mode before your next drive. Android users can download RoadHistorical from Google Play.
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