Name: Gatesville, Texas
Address: Gatesville, TX

Gatesville, TX RoadyGoat

Gatesville, Texas, has a rich history that dates back to 1854 when it was established on land donated by Richard G. Grant. The city's name was inspired by the nearby Fort Gates, which had been established in 1849. Over the years, Gatesville has seen significant growth, particularly from 1980 to 2010, largely due to the establishment of Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons. This period saw the population double, with about 9,000 of the 15,591 residents being state prisoners by 2000. A pivotal moment in recent history was the fire on March 16th and 17th, 2026, which destroyed several early 20th-century wooden buildings in downtown Gatesville, including the Gatesville Messenger and Star-Forum, the city's only newspaper for over a century, and a long-standing furniture store. The fire also resulted in the loss of decades of undigitized archives.

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Gatesville, TX RoadyGoat

The name Gatesville has a historical connection to the area's military past. It was named after Fort Gates, which had been established about five miles to the west in 1849. The city itself was established later, in 1854, on land donated by Richard G. Grant. The name pays homage to the fort that preceded it, reflecting the area's early military significance.

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Gatesville, TX RoadyGoat

In 1854, the city of Gatesville was established on land donated by Richard G. Grant. The name Gatesville was inspired by the nearby Fort Gates, which had been established in 1849, about five miles to the west. This historical connection to Fort Gates provides a fascinating glimpse into the early days of the city's formation.

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Gatesville State School For Boys

1887

Gatesville State School for Boys, three miles northeast of Gatesville in Coryell County, was the first juvenile training and rehabilitation institution in the southern United States. It was established by the Texas legislature in 1887 and opened in January 1889 as the House of Correction and Reformatory, a division of the Texas penal system ( see PRISON SYSTEM ). Ben E. McCulloch served as the first superintendent of the facility, which housed sixty-eight boys who had formerly been incarcerated with adult felons. The legislature changed the school's name to State Institution for the Training of Juveniles in 1909 and established a five-member board of trustees to administer the institution. A 1913 law changed the school's name to State Juvenile Training School, and in 1919 a newly established state Board of Control assumed management of the school. The legislature renamed the facility Gatesville State School for Boys in 1939. By 1940 the school housed 767 males who were under the age of seventeen at the time a court committed them to the institution. The residents attended academic and vocational classes and engaged in a variety of farming activities on a 900-acre tract of state land and 2,700 acres of leased land. A parole system that rewarded good behavior permitted the release of certain inmates to private sponsors. The State Youth Development Council began administration of Gatesville State School for Boys in 1949, and the facility enrolled 406 boys in 1950. In 1957 the new Texas Youth Council (later the Texas Youth Commission ) replaced the Youth Development Council. By 1970, 1,830 young male offenders housed on five separate units that included the Hilltop, Riverside, Valley, Hackberry, and Terrace schools resided at the institution. The Texas Youth Council operated a separate facility, the Mountain View School for Boys , also near Gatesville, as a maximum security unit for juvenile offenders. A class-action lawsuit, filed against the Texas Youth Council on behalf of juvenile offenders in 1971, marked the beginning of sweeping changes in the Texas juvenile justice system. The school enrolled approximately 1,500 boys and employed over 250 staff members in 1974, when federal judge William Wayne Justice issued a ruling in Morales v. Turman . The judge ruled that a number of practices at Texas Youth Council facilities constituted cruel and unusual punishment that violated the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Staff members routinely dispensed arbitrary and unnecessary punishments that included beating, solitary confinement, the use of chemical crowd-control devices, and the utilization of drugs instead of psychotherapy as a means for controlling behavior. Justice also concluded that the school's staff failed to protect the inmates from violence and personal injury and that most employees lacked proper qualifications and training for supervising troubled youths. Judge Justice ordered the state to close the Gatesville and Mountain View schools and to develop community alternatives to large juvenile penal institutions. During 1979 the Gatesville State School for Boys closed, and the Texas Youth Council placed juvenile offenders in smaller schools at Brownwood, Crockett, Gainesville, Giddings, and Pyote, as well as at a number of foster and group homes, halfway houses, and residential treatment centers. The Riverside, Valley, and Terrace schools became the Gatesville Unit for female inmates of the Texas Department of Corrections in 1980. The Hilltop and Hackberry schools composed the Hilltop Unit for male felons of the Texas Department of Corrections beginning in 1981.

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Mother Neff State Park

1916

Mother Neff State Park, the first state park in Texas, is on State Highway 236 and the Leon River sixteen miles southeast of Gatesville in eastern Coryell County. It was named for Isabella Eleanor Neff, mother of Governor Pat M. Neff , who willed the first six acres of the park to the state in 1916. Governor Neff deeded the rest of the 259-acre park to the state in 1934. The park was developed during the mid-1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps . It was under the administration of the Texas State Parks Board until 1963, when it became part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department . In the 1980s Mother Neff State Park averaged 130,000 visitors per year. Among the facilities available at the park were campsites, picnic areas, restrooms, and showers. Recreational activities included fishing in the Leon River, but swimming was difficult because the steep riverbanks limited accessibility. The hiking trail provided many opportunities to study birds, wildlife, and plants, and playground equipment was available for children. The park's open-air pavilion was a popular site for family reunions and outdoor weddings. Other nearby points of interest included Lake Belton, twelve miles to the south, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, and the American Railroad Museum in Temple.

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Lincolnville Community

1865

Coryell County, established in 1854, became home to settlers mostly from the Old South. Shortly after the end of the Civil War, local freedmen formed a community four miles west of Gatesville called Lincolnville in honor of president Abraham Lincoln, located near the Moccasin Bend area along the Leon River. James Maberry, former overseer for Chief Justice John Walker Maberry, provided leadership for the founding families of the colony, including Cook, Easley, Mayberry, Snow and Weatherly among others. Acquiring land and establishing new homes on the edge of the Texas frontier was not an easy task, but all of the freedmen were experienced farmers, ranchers, and caretakers. The Leon River Valley provided an abundant supply of catfish and small game and the settlers quickly learned to live off the land to supplement their meager wages as freed slaves. A church and school were immediate priorities of the community which had not previously been allowed to openly practice religion or attend school. Bethlehem Baptist Church was established on April 10, 1872, by the reverend G.C. Alexander. The church later moved to Gatesville in 1882. The first African American school in Coryell County opened in Gatesville in 1868, but the building burned shortly afterwards. In its place, Lincolnville School no. 62 became a public school by 1883 and existed until 1943 when most small, rural schools were consolidated. The survival of Lincolnville, despite racial strife and the harsh conditions of the frontier, is a testament to the efforts of the citizens of the Lincolnville Community. A few descendants of the founding families remain in the area today. (2015)

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Brown, Ina Corinne

1929

Ina Corinne Brown, teacher, was born in Gatesville, Texas, on May 27, 1896, the daughter of John Dayton and Corinne (Wells) Brown. She was a descendant of Orceneth Fisher , prominent pioneer Methodist preacher in Texas. Her great-grandfather Fisher's second wife was Rebecca Jane Fisher . Ina attended Southern Methodist University from 1919 to 1921. She then moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where she served on the educational staff of the Methodist Church until 1934. The University of Chicago granted her a B.A. degree in 1936 and a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1942. She also studied at the London School of Economics and, in 1937–38, at the British Museum on a Rosenwald Fellowship. From 1939 to 1941 she worked for the federal government's National Survey of Higher Education for Negroes. Her duties there included assisting black colleges throughout the United States to develop their curricula. She also traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, and Africa to study racial problems. She was professor of social anthropology at Scarritt College, Nashville, from 1942 to 1966; after her retirement she was professor emeritus there. She was a special lecturer at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, and Fisk University, all in Nashville. She was the author of three books on race relations: The Story of the American Negro (1936), Race Relations in a Democracy (1949), and Understanding Other Cultures (1963). Understanding Other Cultures was once required freshman English reading at the University of Texas and has been used in Japanese colleges for students learning English. Brown contributed to the Encyclopedia of Black America (1981), and she was a consultant in behavioral sciences to World Book Encyclopedia from 1963 to 1966. Ina Brown was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, the International Federation of University Women, and the American Association of University Women . She was a fellow of the American Anthropological Association, the American Geographical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and the Society for Applied Anthropology. She served as a consultant to city public school systems involved in desegregation in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida, a service sponsored by Peabody College. In 1929–30 she and a woman companion crossed Central Africa from the mouth of the Congo on the west coast to Mombasa in British East Africa (now Kenya) on the east coast, a distance of 1,700 miles. It was a journey that probably no woman had made before that time. The two traveled by boat and train, were carried in hammocks, and walked. On her trip to Asia Brown interviewed Mahatma Gandhi and Toyohiko Kagawa. In her later years her health was poor, but she continued her reading and writing–especially letters to the Nashville daily papers. She was chosen in 1984 as a distinguished alumna of Southern Methodist University. Ina Brown died in Hermitage, Tennessee, near Nashville, on May 12, 1984.

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Leon River Bridge

1854

The route once known as the Old Georgetown Road was in existence by 1854 and crossed the Leon River here. A ferry operated at this crossing as early as 1854 and was owned by R. G. Grant, a local entrepreneur and land developer. The Bowstring Truss Bridge erected near here in 1882 was the first metal truss bridge in Coryell County. It was damaged by two major floods in 1899 and 1900, and the County Commissioners Court authorized the building of another bridge. The George E. King Bridge Company of Des Moines, Iowa built this structure in 1904. Features include steel construction, wood decking, original lattice railings, pin-connected members, and elaborate stone abutments. The overall length of 141 feet from end to end allows for the 4-foot depth of masonry piers supporting the bridge. It is a 137-foot Pratt through truss span with a 5-foot timber approach span, and is one of few such bridges surviving in Texas. The 1904 bridge served as a major east-west artery for Central Texas. The road became part of State Highway 7 in 1917, and was renamed U.S. Highway 84 in the 1930s. The historic bridge was restored and rededicated in 1994. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1996

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Fort Gates

1849

In the mid-1800s, Native tribes often met westward Anglo expansion in Texas with hostilities along the frontier line. To shield settlers form potential attack, the U.S. Army established a static line of outposts form the Rio Grande northward to the Red River. Few early settlements existed in this vast, unprotected area created from the Milam Land District (formerly Robertson’s Colony). After the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), Fort Gates, the last of a cordon of stockaded fortifications across Texas at the time, was established to defend area settlers. The U.S. Army erected the post, named for Mexican-American War veteran Maj. Collinson Reed Gates of the 4th U.S. Infantry, about five miles southeast of present day Gatesville on Oct. 26, 1849. Four companies of the 8th U.S. Infantry Regiment manned Fort Gates’ 17 buildings. Very soon after the garrison was established, many of the families in upper Milam County moved here. As a result, the post served as the nucleus for the settlement of the surrounding area. The post ably performed in lessening the threat of attacks from Native tribes. With its primary objective accomplished, the U.S. Army transferred the garrison to Fort Phantom Hill (Jones County) in March 1852 and officially closed Fort Gates in February 1853. In 1853, O.T. Tyler, an early Fort Gates settler, began to organize a county government. Settlers convened and signed a petition to the Texas House of Representatives, and on February 4, 1854, Gov. Elisha M. Pease signed legislation creating Coryell County. Fort Gates served as the county seat until May 27, 1854, when the county clerk transferred archives to Gatesville, the new seat of government. (2006)

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Gatesville, Texas

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