“This Is The Place,” shouted Zebulon Hockett in 1848 to anyone seeking a better life. Zeb and his wife, Mary, were barely planted here themselves. They arrived in Indianola aboard a groaning canvas-topped wagon pulled by a yoke of oxen. The couple established the first general store and built the first frame house on what would become Indianola’s downtown square.

But Indianola didn’t even exist then. It was a year later that Paris P Henderson, Warren County’s organizing sheriff, came to town with a team, looking for 80 acres to create a seat of justice for the emerging county.

Paris had a sandwich with him, wrapped in a newspaper. When the group stopped for lunch and he unwrapped his sandwich he read an article about Indianola, Texas. He shared the name and the group agreed it would be well-suited for the town that would be the county seat of the new county.

John M Laverty, another early settler, was hired to survey and plat the town. He created “original Indianola” — with an octagon-shaped public square at the center and 24 blocks radiating outward with each block divided into 24 lots that ranged in sale price from $5 to $20.

From this small beginning and following a bountiful harvest, a steady stream of immigrants arrived. In these times, the sturdier, better outfitted and more adventurous traveled to distant places for supplies, milling grain and retrieving mail, leaving behind their feeble and more dependent to keep hearth, home and the livestock safe in what was still a wild, wooly and raw place.

Framing the beginning of Warren County and Indianola required boldness, cleverness and a touch of bodacious brassiness, and lots of hard work. But it framed its founding settlers with a sense of belonging and community that continues today.