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Section 1 Executive
                                                                                        Community Profile

                                            HISTORICAL MARKERS IN WESTLAKE
                                            Westlake is also on a journey toward its own destiny that will be unlike

                                            any other of the towns around it – better, richer because Westlake will
             Board members of the
                                            take into account its past in charting its future.   The folk of yesterday
             Westlake Historical
                                            are gone and so is most of the evidence proving they were here. They are
             Preservation Society
                                            remembered only as long as there are rememberers.   When even memories
             researched eight
                                            are gone, there is precious little – an old house here or there, small
             significant locations
                                            cemeteries with headstones askew, historical plaques, old- timey things in
             recently nominated for
                                            museums,  photographs,  bits of poetry, recipes and old letters with the
             historical markers.  The
                                            musty smell of time, documents from court house records, words
             Town Council
                                            trapped in newspapers,  magazines or books.
             unanimously approved a
             historical marker master

             plan at the June 13th,
                                            WESTLAKE AND THE CROSS TIMBERS
             2011 meeting which
                                            http://                        This marker stands next to the loop
             identified the sites and       img.groundspeak.com/           parking lot in front of the Westlake
                                                                           Academy on JT Ottinger Road.
             place markers.                 waymarking/c9ea5ea6-
                                            bc04-4c82-94ef-                Our history begins in a distinctively
             The sites are in the heart of  fd89eca8a223.jpg               unique geographic region of North
             Westlake and on highly                                        Central Texas, the Cross Timbers. Early
             traveled roads.  Instead of                                   explorers and travelers noticed the
                                                                           area because of the extended
             going through the State to                                    groves of oak trees bordered with

             receive the designated         stretches of open prairie. As early as 1832, Washington Irving
                                            described it in a Tour of the Prairies: "I shall not easily forget the
             plaques, the Town will
                                            mortal toil, and the vexations of flesh and spirit, that we undertook
             take on the project.  The      occasionally,  in our wanderings through the Cross Timber. It was like
                                            struggling through forests of cast iron."
             Texas Historical Marker
             application process            The Cross Timbers region extends across parts of Kansas, Oklahoma,
             requires exhaustive            and Texas. From a map, it may be seen
                                            that the region runs in irregular vertical
             research and
                                            lines, a little like icing running down the
             documentation for              sides of a cake. Benjamin Tharp writings
                                            described the area as timbered islands
             potential sites and can
                                            amid lakes of grass called oak
             take up two to three years.    savannas, a name that refers to
                                            wooded areas broken by stretches of
                                            grasslands. Hence, describing our home
                                            Westlake,  Texas."

                                            The rock chimney from the original Buck
                                            King homestead still standing at Pearson
                                            Lane and Aspen Lane.






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