Buda

The rail stop's first name, Du Pre, has its own folk story: in 1880, as the railroad pushed into Hays County, the Mountain City postmaster is said to have asked an official, "Do, pray, give us a depot." The land had been part of Stephen vanRensslaer Egleston's Mexican grant and was settled as early as 1846 by Phillip J. Allen. The town became a popular eating stop for rail travelers, and at times it supported mills, hotels, banks, a lumberyard, two newspapers and a cheese factory. Its population fell from about 600 in 1929 to 300 by 1933.

What the plaque says

Buda Originally known as Du Pre, Buda was founded along a line of the International and Great Northern Railroad. Cornelia A. Trimble gave land for the townsite in 1881. The name "Buda" was adopted in the late 1880s, although its origin is unclear. According to popular legends, it was either related to Budapest, Hungary, or evolved from the Spanish word for widow, "viuda," and honored the women who cooked in one of the local hotels. Buda was once the site of a variety of businesses, including a theater, skating rink, newspaper, and two banks. The town was incorporated in 1948. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• McKinney Falls State Park — 9.9 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Barton Springs Pool — 13 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 14 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 14 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.

More markers nearby

• Antioch Colony — 0.5 mi
• Barton Cemetery — 2.4 mi
• Manchaca United Methodist Church — 4.0 mi
• Goforth — 4.9 mi