Off to Alvarado

Top L to R: Horse sculpture, downtown area
Bottom: Downtown area

It was a rainy, fall day in North Texas and we wanted something to do so we took a drive to Alvarado for lunch. Alvarado is the oldest town in Johnson County and is fairly calm until Saturday nights when it gets marginally more exciting, according to local residents. Located just fifteen miles east of the giant metropolis of Cleburne, it began when David Mitchell established a trading post near Alvarado in 1849, about the time colonists of M.S. Peters’ empresario land grant began of settle the area. William Balch settled this area, then returned with his family in the spring of 1851. He established the Sprawler Hotel, so named because his many guests sometimes had to sleep on pallets in the front yard. Balch became known as the ‘Father of Alvarado’ for having the town site surveyed in 1854, establishing the first general merchandise stores on the square and for donating land for a cemetery, school and union church. This first school had a sturdy, eight-foot fence to keep the students from being trampled under the hoofs of passing north- and west-bound herds of cattle.