Keene, Texas

Everything Keene is known for

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Music in Keene

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Keene

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Keene.

Chisholm Trail 8 songs Brazos River 42 songs Interstate 20 13 songs Texas State Highway 199 8 songs Interstate 35 43 songs Trinity River 11 songs

Musical Heritage

The Rockabilly Wildman Born in Cleburne RoadyGoat

Cleburne's contribution to the birth of rock and roll was a guitar-slinging kid named Johnny Carroll, born here on October 23, 1937. His family name was actually Carrell, but when the Decca label misspelled it Carroll on his first records, the spelling stuck for the rest of his career. Carroll grew up mostly on the family farm in nearby Godley and bought his first guitar at age nine with money he earned hauling water at a World War II prisoner-of-war camp; his fiddle-playing mother taught him the basics and the radio taught him the rest. By the mid-1950s he was cutting raw, frantic rockabilly sides for Decca, music that flopped commercially at the time but is now treasured by collectors as some of the wildest Texas rock and roll of the era. He even appeared in the 1956 teen-rock film Rock, Baby, Rock It, partly shot around Dallas, performing the kind of hopped-up hillbilly rock that scandalized parents and thrilled kids. Long after his death, European labels reissued his catalog and rockabilly revivalists made him a cult hero. It all started with a farm boy from Johnson County. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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History of Keene

The First Airplane in Texas Limped Out of Keene RoadyGoat

Around 1912 a speed-mad young man named Slats Rogers, born Floyd Rodgers in Georgia and raised here as a teenager, decided he was going to build an airplane. He started the work in Cleburne and finished it in Keene, teaming with a Santa Fe railroad engineer friend, John C. Fine, to bolt together a flimsy flying machine just a few years after the Wright brothers. The right wing drooped no matter what they did, so the contraption earned the name Old Soggy No. 1, and it is generally credited as the first airplane ever built in Texas. The first flight in 1912 was an accident: taxiing across a field, Rogers gunned it to clear a ditch, lurched maybe 200 feet into the air, and crashed hard enough to snap off the wheels and tear away that bad wing. He survived, of course. Rogers went on to a wild career as a barnstormer, stunt flier, crop duster, and Prohibition-era aerial bootlegger, and later became the first Texan to hold a pilot's license. (Source: Smithsonian Air & Space; University of Houston, The Engines of Our Ingenuity.)

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From Elm Grove to Keene RoadyGoat

The town you're rolling into started under a different name. The first settler in this part of Johnson County was Jeremiah Easterwood, who arrived around 1852 and put up a Methodist meeting house that doubled as a school, and the little community came to be called Elm Grove. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway pushed through about 1890, a general store opened in 1893, and when a post office was granted in 1894 the postal service handed the place a new name: Keene. The most repeated tradition is that it honors Keene, New Hampshire, though the records simply say postal officials chose it, so that origin is best treated as the leading story rather than settled fact. What actually reshaped the town that same year was religion: Seventh-day Adventists had begun buying up land here to build a school and a community around it. Elm Grove the farm crossroads quietly became Keene the Adventist college town, and it has worn that identity ever since. (Source: Handbook of Texas; City of Keene history.)

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The Names That Still Run the Town RoadyGoat

Walk the old part of Keene and you're walking through a roster of its founders. The first teacher in the Adventist school, in 1893, was Ella E. Evans, who taught the settlers' children before the academy even had a proper building. When Keene Industrial Academy formally opened in January 1894, its first principal was C. B. Hughes, who steered the fragile young school through its first terms. A generation later, in 1937, university president Harry H. Hamilton designed the campus's beloved Mizpah Gate and had students build it. The wider community organized fast, too: an 1898 public vote of 76 to 4 created Keene Independent School District for the families who weren't Adventist. These weren't distant benefactors who lent a name and left; they were teachers, principals, and neighbors who lived on the prairie they were settling. Their surnames still surface on the campus buildings, church rolls, and street signs of a town that, more than most, knows exactly who built it. (Source: City of Keene history; Southwestern Adventist University.)

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Rodgers, Floyd H. [Slats]

1912

Floyd H. (Slats) Rodgers, aviation pioneer, was born in Tunnel Hill, Georgia, on March 7, 1889, the son of Charlie and Alice (Russell) Rodgers. He moved with the family to Keene, Texas, and after a brief education moved to the farm of an uncle near Waco. At the age of eighteen he applied for employment with the railroad; he advanced to locomotive engineer on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe in 1915. That same year he married Rosie Oliver; they had four children and were later divorced. Rodgers's boyhood experience with kites evolved into an avid interest in flying. Largely self-taught, he began to read extensively about planes. He first built a model plane that he put on display, and soon decided to build a larger version. With the help of John C. Fine, an engineer he met working on the Santa Fe, Rodgers designed and built a primitive aircraft, reputed to be the first built in Texas, which he flew without instruction in late 1912, a mere nine years after the first manned airplane flight by the Wright brothers. Because of a persistent droop in one wing Rodgers called the plane Old Soggy No. 1; he retired it in 1913. He became a civilian flight instructor for the army in 1916 and went on to fly army-surplus Jennies and Canucks as a barnstormer and circus stunt pilot after World War I . During prohibition he bought his own plane to ferry bootleg liquor from Mexico to Texas. He was involved in gambling and moonshining operations and eventually served six months in a Dallas jail for his illegal activities. After prohibition, as livelihood from barnstorming waned, he turned to crop dusting in the lower Rio Grande valley. On special charter requests he would sometimes shock his passenger with unforgettable aerial performances. He was a check pilot for Civilian Pilot Training just before World War II . Although his flight career extended to his later years, his flamboyant lifestyle and penchant for the illegal was increasingly limited by rules and regulations of the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Rodgers coauthored an autobiography, Old Soggy No. 1 (1954), in which he preserves the uninhibited character of the first three decades of aviation and reveals his own uniqueness. Bootlegging and flying stunts made him famous among the aviators and law-enforcement officers within the range of Love Field in Dallas as well as later in the lower Rio Grande valley. He performed the aviation heroics attendant upon early flight, including such incidents as surviving a crash after the motor had fallen off, safely landing a fabric-covered aircraft with one side in flames, having the first pilot's license in Texas and being the first to have it revoked, and landing safely at night after being blinded by lighted fireworks mounted on his plane. After his second marriage, Rodgers bought a 400–500 acre ranch in Bandera and opened a steakhouse. He subsequently sold out and moved to McAllen, opened another steakhouse, and ran a fisherman's camp in nearby Zapata. Slats Rodgers died on July 5, 1956, in McAllen and was buried at Laurel Hills Cemetery in Mission.

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Pioneer Texas Telephones

1878

The first telephones in Texas, in 1878, connected the "Galveston News" with the home of its publisher, Col. A. H. Belo. Galveston also had the first exchange, 1879, and first long-distance line, which ran to Houston, in 1883. Cleburne phone service began 1882 when Automatic Telephone Company opened. In 1897 Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Company (which later joined Bell System) started another firm. It built city's first long distance line, 12 miles to Alvarado junction. Monthly rates were $2 to $3. About 1904, the Automatic Telephone Company installed some of first dial phones in U.S.- fifteen years before they were used successfully elsewhere. But in 1912, problems forced the Automatic Telephone Company to close. Near turn of century, rural areas often used barbed wire fences for phone lines. Even urban homes shared party lines, each one having its special "ring". Circuits joined a main switchboard manned by one operator "central"--- the hub of local news. "Central" always knew where to find town doctor and was a clearing house for funeral plans. The unemployed could ask her who needed workers; she advertised by ringing all phones to read announcements. Many small towns regretted losing her services when dial phones came into use. By 1966, Texas had 4,474,722 telephones, 134 companies. Incise in base: Early travel, transportation and communication series erected by the Moody Foundation.

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Adventist Churches

1893

The Adventist movement, which developed from a schism in the religious following of William Miller and broke into several different groups, apparently reached Texas in the late 1880s. The town of Keene in Johnson County was established by a group of Seventh-day Adventists in 1893. In 1894 the church members organized Keene Industrial Academy, which became Southwestern Adventist College, and later Southwestern Adventist University. Tenets of the Adventist creed include biblical literalism, the personal and imminent second advent of Christ on earth, and the celebration of Saturday as the Sabbath. The church stresses promotion through education, evangelism, and publication. The religious census of 1906 reported a total membership of 1,825 in all the Adventist bodies in Texas. In 1926 the Advent Christian Church had ten churches with 623 members, the Seventh-day Adventists had fifty-two churches with 3,011 members, the Church of God (Adventist) had two churches with 100 members, and the Church of God in Christ Jesus had four churches with 117 members. In 1936 the Advent Christian Church had four organizations with 370 members, the Seventh-day Adventists had sixty-seven churches with 4,102 members, the Church of God (Adventist) had two branches of three churches each and a total of 244 members. By 1936 the Church of God in Christ Jesus had separated from the Adventist groups and had 128 churches with a membership of 5,052. Seventh-day Adventist membership in Texas increased from 6,259 on January 1, 1950, to 9,495 on June 30, 1966. During the same period the number of churches increased from 79 to 118. Thirty-eight new churches were constructed between 1959 and 1966, in such key cities as Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Amarillo. In 1962 a camp-meeting pavilion with seating capacity for 5,000 was constructed in Keene. In 1995 the Texas Conference employed 120 pastoral and church workers. In addition, the conference operated forty-five elementary schools, four secondary schools, and Southwestern Adventist College ( see ADVENTIST SCHOOLS ). The conference operated five medical institutions-Huguley Memorial Medical Center, Fort Worth; Willow Creek Psychiatric, Arlington; Metroplex Hospital, Killeen; Rollins Brook Community Hospital, Lampasas; and Central Texas Medical Center, San Marcos. It also operated an ambulance service in San Antonio. More than 100 physicians and dentists operated self-supporting clinics as officials of the Seventh-day Adventist Medical and Dental Association. In 2000 Texas Seventh-day Adventists belonged to four different conferences. Geographically, most of Texas lay within the Texas Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, with its headquarters in Alvarado, near Fort Worth; part of northwestern Texas lay within the Texaco Conference; Bowie County was part of the Arkansas-Louisiana Conference; and African-American Seventh-day Adventists belonged to the Southwestern Region Conference. In 2000 Texas Seventh-day Adventists had 303 churches and 46,128 members.

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Buchanan, TX

1856

Buchanan, five miles northwest of Cleburne in central Johnson County, was established in 1856 and selected as the second county seat in a special election held on October 4 of that year, after the discovery that the original county seat, Wardville, was more than six miles from the county's geographic center. Buchanan was named for Democratic presidential nominee James Buchanan. Following the completion of a log courthouse, the first term of the county court met at Buchanan on February 16, 1857, by which time James Buchanan had been elected president. The county court continued to meet in Buchanan for just over ten years. A post office opened there in 1857, and during the following year a jail was completed. An inadequate water supply, however, severely hampered growth. In 1866 the state legislature designated a portion of western Johnson County for inclusion in the newly established Hood County. This shift of territory reduced Johnson County's size and relocated its geographic center so that Buchanan was no longer within six miles of it. In a special election on March 23, 1867, county voters chose a new county seat, Camp Henderson, which became Cleburne. Buchanan lost its post office in 1868 and was abandoned by 1892.

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Mizpah Gate

1937

Southwestern Adventist University was founded in 1883 as the Keene Industrial and Missionary Academy. The school was founded with the purpose of training workers to fulfill positions of responsibility within the Seventh-Day Adventist denomination. The school’s early administrators successfully pioneered an industrial training component along with education, which assured each graduate a useful trade. After assuming the presidency of the school in 1937, former teacher Harry H. Hamilton oversaw the construction of the Mizpah Gate. Prior to that time, the campus had been surrounded by a barbed wire fence that served to keep out starving livestock. Turnstiles at the north and south sides of campus granted access to the site. The gradual containment of domestic animals during the early 20th century enabled the fence to be removed, and the Mizpah Gate, which replaced the south turnstile, was designated as the new official entrance onto campus. The gate was constructed of brick and petrified wood transported from adjacent Somervell County and built by students under the supervision of local workmen. The structure was completed in June 1937, and was dedicated as a gift of that year’s graduating class. The name “Mizpah” was taken from the Bible’s Genesis 31:49, “And Mizpah; for he said, the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent from one another.” As early as 1921, the school’s annual yearbook had been titled The Mizpah. Today, the gate continues to serve as a symbol of the university as it has for generations of students and the greater Johnson County community. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2009

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Arnold, Oliver Perry

1847

An officer noted for integrity. Born in South Carolina. Came to Texas 1847, and engaged in livestock and mercantile business. Spent six years seeking gold in California. Returned to Johnson County, 1859; joined Co. H, Young's regiment, 1861. Served with distinction as Sheriff of Johnson County, 1870-1876. Married Abigail Winchester; they had 12 children. Arnold was the first president, Johnson County Park and Fair Association.

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Everything Near Keene

397 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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