Weatherford, Texas

Parker County was created in eighteen fifty-five and named for pioneer Isaac Parker. Its county seat, established the following year, was named for Jefferson Weatherford, the Texas senator who co-authored the bill that created the county. The town incorporated in eighteen fifty-eight, thirty miles west of what would become Fort Worth.

By the early twentieth century Parker County had reinvented itself as watermelon country, at one point proclaiming itself the World's Greatest Watermelon Center. But Weatherford's most enduring claim to fame is the women it produced. Mary Martin was born here on December first, nineteen thirteen. She would originate the roles of Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music, and she flew across Broadway stages as Peter Pan. Her son, Larry Hagman, grew up here too and later became J.R. Ewing on Dallas. Not bad for the watermelon capital.