City of Palo Pinto

Workers paving a road

Paving the Bankhead (Palo Pinto County Historical Association)

Two soldiers standing in front of a car holding small children at a Sinclair gas station

Sinclair Station (Palo Pinto County Historical Association)

Two women on motorcycles next to a person on a horse

Motoring in town.(Palo Pinto County Historical Association)

Truck wrapped to look like a chicken

Unique advertising on Palo Pinto streets (Palo Pinto County Historical Association)

Colorized postcard of a wooden bridge over a creek labeled New suspension bridge at Lover’s Retreat near Mineral Wells, Texas. The South’s greatest health resort

Lover’s Retreat near Palo Pinto (Palo Pinto County Historical Association)

Two storey stone building with iron bars on windows

Old Jail Museum (Mark Fisher)

Palo Pinto

Beginning in 1855, settlers came to the Palo Pinto area for the fertile soil of the Brazos River Valley. The town of Golconda, later renamed Palo Pinto, was formed as the county seat in 1857, and by the 1870s the town had become an established ranching locale. This prosperity did not last long, as the Texas and Pacific Railway bypassed the town when it laid tracks through the area in 1880. The Bankhead Highway was officially designated through Palo Pinto in 1919, when the Highway Commission approved funding for the north loop of SH 1 through multiple locations in order to allow for an increase of oil production during World War I. While you’re in town, stop by the Old Jail Museum Complex and learn about life in this rural county before the Bankhead Highway.
Mineral Wells Area Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Bureau
511 E. Hubbard, Mineral Wells, TX
800.252.6989
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PALO PINTO MAP
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