Castell School

The town takes its name from Count Carl of Castell-Castell, born in Lower Franconia in 1801. After service in Hanoverian and Austrian armies, he organized a society in Mainz in 1842 to direct German emigration to Texas, and when twenty-one noblemen formed the Adelsverein that April, he became its vice president and business manager. He ran it through the hard years on the Fisher-Miller grant with little business sense; by the Handbook's account his blunders, and in the end deception, helped the society fail. He died in March 1850, weeks after the Duke of Nassau made him a colonel.

What the plaque says

Castell School Education for students in Castell may have begun as early as 1852, according to local oral tradition. Earliest written records indicate that the Llano County commissioners court designated the Castell School as District No. 6 in 1884, and land was deeded for the school's use six years later. Members of the community built a two-room schoolhouse, which was expanded to three classrooms in 1929. Castell School housed ten grades, so students wishing to complete their high school education did so in Llano, Fredericksburg or Mason. Due to declining enrollment, the school closed in 1948 and was consolidated with the Llano School District, but the school building remained in use as a community center. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 16 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.
• Fort Mason — 17 mi
  A reconstructed officers' quarters on Post Oak Hill above Mason, standing where the army's stone fort was taken apart by the town that grew up below it.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 17 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.
• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 24 mi
  A limestone cave on the James River where about four million Mexican free-tailed bats raise their young each summer, kept open to visitors by a family's gift.

More markers nearby

• Trinity United Methodist Church Cemetery — steps away
• German Settlements — 0.4 mi
• First Known Religious Services in Mason County — 0.7 mi
• St. John Lutheran Church Cemetery — 0.8 mi