Buffalo Gap College

The Handbook of Texas traces the college to a cowboy student who began pushing in 1878 for a public school in town. The cornerstone was laid in 1883, and vandals later pried it out and stole the documents sealed inside. Tuition and board for the five-month term came to $100, and by December 1885 there were 106 students. Sponsorship passed to the Buffalo Gap and San Saba presbyteries of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. By December 1902, with the charter near its end, the presbytery ordered the property sold, and the sale was completed in 1906.

What the plaque says

Founded 1885 by Presbyterian Church, institution previously operated as a high school. In peak year, over 300 pupils, many from distant places, attended. First president was W. H. White. College had greatest success under J. M. Wagstaff. Presidents later were J. W. Melton, R. W. Benge, E. W. Doran, J. N. Ellis, John Collier, J. B. Clay and (again) W. H. White. The two-story, red sandstone building had four classrooms on the first floor, an auditorium on the second, and a belfry. The curriculum included courses in Latin, Greek, Christian evidence, physics, calculus, and music. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 0.4 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Abilene State Park — 5.0 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Frontier Texas! — 13 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 24 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.

More markers nearby

• Town of Buffalo Gap — steps away
• The Ernie Wilson Museum — 0.4 mi
• Taylor County — 3.9 mi
• The Civilian Conservation Corps at Abilene State Park — 4.3 mi