Somervell County Historical Society Museum

10/07/2026

Somervell County Commissioner's Court 1904. The elected officials at the time. I don't know their order in the photograph. County Judge R.L. Bryant, F.B. Kirby precinct 1, B.A. Collins precinct 2, J. B. Parnell precinct 3, and L.A. Williams precinct 4.

10/07/2026

Somervell County Courthouse in Glen Rose,Tx circa 1925
This is the side facing Shoo-Fly Soda Shop.

10/05/2026

He also operated the Glen Rose Herald for about 5 years.

There was a Crockett running a newspaper in Granbury, and he was David Crockett's grandson.

Ashley Wilson Crockett was born in Johnson County in 1857, twenty-one years after his grandfather died at the Alamo. His father was Robert Patton Crockett, one of David's sons. So Ashley grew up carrying one of the most famous names in Texas history without ever having met the man who made it famous.

He made his own way with printer's ink. The Hood County Genealogical and Historical Society records that he bought the Granbury Vidette in 1883 and renamed it the Granbury Graphic, sold it in 1907, and started another paper, the Granbury Tablet, in 1919.

He lived a long life in that town. Ashley Crockett died in Granbury on May 31, 1954, at the age of 96, and his obituary called him the only living grandson of David Crockett.

Then came that winter. Walt Disney put David Crockett on television, and within months coonskin caps were turning up on children all over America. A whole country fell in love with his grandfather.

Ashley missed it by a matter of months. He is buried in Granbury Cemetery, a long way from the Alamo and right at home in the town where he spent his life putting out the news.

10/05/2026

And he lived in Glen Rose before he moved to Granbury!

10/05/2026

During my years at FOX 4, Dinosaur Valley State Park near Glen Rose was a place I featured often in my Lone Star Adventures series. It’s also somewhere my family has enjoyed visiting for years. There aren’t many places where you can wade into a Texas river, look down and realize you’re standing in essentially the same spot where a dinosaur walked more than 100 million years ago.

And now Dinosaur Valley has given us another surprise.

Severe drought and unusually low water in the Paluxy River recently gave researchers and volunteers access to areas normally covered by water and sediment. After weeks of work, they documented more than 60 previously unrecorded dinosaur footprints at the park’s Taylor and Baker sites.

Most are believed to have been left by Acrocanthosaurus, a huge meat-eating dinosaur that walked on two legs. Other tracks at Dinosaur Valley are attributed to Sauroposeidon, the enormous long-necked plant eater whose footprints can be more than three feet long. The tracks were made roughly 112 to 113 million years ago, when this part of Texas looked nothing like it does today.

Researchers didn’t simply photograph the newly exposed tracks. Teams spent about four weeks documenting them with photography, video, drones and 3-D mapping so there will be a permanent scientific record after the river covers them again.

And they may have found something particularly unusual.

At the Baker site, researchers discovered claw impressions that could indicate a dinosaur was partially floating in deeper water and pushing itself along the bottom with two limbs at the same time. If that interpretation holds up, the tracks could reveal something new about how these animals moved.

There’s a wonderful historical symmetry to all of this.

A massive flood in 1908 scoured the Paluxy River bed, and the following year 9-year-old George Adams noticed large three-toed tracks in the limestone. Decades later, paleontologist R.T. Bird came to Glen Rose and discovered sauropod tracks. They became enormously important scientifically — the first distinct sauropod trackways ever discovered and evidence that these enormous animals walked on land on all four legs.

Dinosaur Valley State Park eventually opened in 1972 specifically to protect this extraordinary place, and today it is a National Natural Landmark.

That’s part of what I’ve always loved about the park. The Paluxy is beautiful, the hiking is terrific and it’s a wonderful family destination. But those footprints give it something very few places anywhere can duplicate.

10/02/2026

Fossilmania at the Expo October 30,31& November 1

10/02/2026

10/02/2026

History repeats itself Tuesday as I had this little visitor to the park pose in a sauropod track.
Eighty Six years ago Teddy Pendly was photographed by Dr. Roland T. Bird as he was placed in a Saurposeidon track during the removal of the track site that would be shipped to the American Museum of Natural History that year and would be put on display in 1954.

10/02/2026

Only in Glen Rose,Tx would this be an indication that the fall season is upon us!

10/02/2026

The Paluxy River in Glen Rose,Tx and specifically Dinosaur Valley State Park exhibit the best Sauroposeidon proteles tracks in the world. It had four toes. This animal in it's old mature stage may have been 50 tons in weight and 60 feet tall. The footprints were first discovered by Charlie Moss in the 1930's and made famous by relic hunter Roland T. Bird from the American Museum of Natural History in 1940.