1/2 Mile to the Site of Kenney's Fort

Kenney's Fort was small. The Handbook of Texas says Thomas Kenney, a San Jacinto veteran, built it in 1839 at the mouth of Dyer Branch on Brushy Creek: one blockhouse, three or four log cabins and an eight-foot stockade, ordinarily defended by five or six armed farmers. In August 1840 Joseph Weeks and other settlers held it against Comanches. After a planned expedition it was briefly renamed Fort Dunnington, for a lieutenant killed in the Council House Fight, then reverted. Only part of the flagpole survives, and the 1936 marker stands a half mile north of the site.

What the plaque says

1/2 Mile to the Site of Kenney's Fort First settlement in Williamson County. Erected as a home by Dr. Thomas Kenney and Joseph Barnhart in the spring of 1839. Served as a place of defense during Indian raids. Rendezvous of the Santa Fe Expedition, 1841. Here the archives of the Republic of Texas en route to Washington-on-the-Brazos were captured on December 31, 1842 and returned to Austin. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Round Rock — 2.8 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Inner Space Cavern — 6.6 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 8.3 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Mount Bonnell — 16 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.

More markers nearby

• Trinity Lutheran College — 1.6 mi
• Round Rock — 2.1 mi
• Otto Reinke Building — 2.2 mi
• Sam Bass' Death Site — 2.3 mi