Shackelford County Texas map
32.74° N · 99.35° W · County seat: Albany · 915 sq mi
Two towns, about 3,100 people and 915 square miles of Clear Fork of the Brazos ranch country. What brings visitors is the frontier post at Fort Griffin north of Albany and the limestone courthouse square in Albany itself, one of the most intact small-county squares in West Texas.
Albany sits at the crossing of US-180 and US-283 near the middle of the county. Fort Griffin stands about 15 miles north on US-283, above the Clear Fork.
Where Shackelford County is
The county sits northeast of Abilene where the rolling plains break into mesquite flats and low sandstone hills. Abilene is 30 miles southwest, the closest city of any size; Fort Worth is about 117 miles east and Wichita Falls 95 miles northeast.
Neighbors run: Throckmorton to the north, Stephens east, Eastland southeast, Callahan south, Jones west and Haskell northwest. The Clear Fork of the Brazos enters from Jones County in the west, swings north past Fort Griffin and leaves into Throckmorton County, and it is the reason the army and then the cattle trails came through here at all.
The legislature marked the county off in 1858 out of land assigned to Bosque County, but settlement stalled through the Civil War and the county was not organized until 1874. It is named for Dr. Jack Shackelford, an Alabama physician who raised and equipped a company of volunteers at his own expense for the Texas Revolution.
Towns
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Albany (county seat) | City | 1,860 |
| Moran | City | 230 |
Those two incorporated places hold about two-thirds of the county's people; the rest live on ranches and at crossroads settlements.
Roads
- US-180 – the east–west route, entering from Jones County near Lueders, through Albany and on east to Breckenridge.
- US-283 – north–south through Albany, past Fort Griffin to Throckmorton, and south to Baird on I-20.
- SH-6 – southeast out of Albany through Moran toward Cisco in Eastland County.
- SH-351 – the direct road southwest to Abilene, about a 35-mile run.
There is no interstate in the county. Traffic bound for I-20 uses US-283 south to Baird or SH-351 into Abilene.
Fort Griffin and the Clear Fork
The army built Fort Griffin in 1867 on a flat-topped hill above the Clear Fork, one of a line of posts meant to screen the settled counties. Below the hill grew a town called the Flat, a buffalo-hide market and a stop on the Western Trail where herds crossed on their way to Dodge City. The post closed in 1881 once the herds and the buffalo were gone, and the Flat emptied with it.
What is left is a state historic site with the stone chimneys and foundations of the fort, the restored bakery and administration building, and the state's official Texas Longhorn herd grazing the surrounding pasture. The site is on US-283 north of Albany.
The Albany square
Albany's courthouse is a native limestone building from the 1880s, still in use, and the square around it kept its scale because nothing ever came along to force a rebuild. The 1877 stone jail on the square houses the Old Jail Art Center, a small museum with a collection unusual for a town of 1,800. Each June the town stages the Fort Griffin Fandangle, an outdoor musical about the county's frontier years that has run since the 1930s and is put on by local residents in a prairie amphitheater on the edge of town.