Divide School

The Divide is a strip of the Edwards Plateau five to fifteen miles wide that splits the rainfall runoff, homesteaded in the early 1880s. Windmills and barbed wire made it preferred ranch country for cattle, sheep and Angora goats. In the 1940s the Divide Presbyterian Chapel served its families. Residents built a community building in 1949, the year electricity reached western Kerr County, and two rooms were added to the school in 1960, when forty-five pupils enrolled. In 2000 The Divide had 250 people, and its school was one of the few one-room schools still operating in the country.

What the plaque says

Divide School The first school classes held in this vicinity began in 1882, in the home of a hired teacher. The only two area families with children paid the instructor's salary. In 1893, William and Lou Wharton provided land for a one-room schoolhouse to meet the growing needs of the local ranching families. Originally located approximately one mile southeast of the present Texas Highway 41 and U.S. Highway 83 intersection, the building was moved to the Emil Leinweber Ranch in 1905 to be closer to the area's school-age children at that time. The school year lasted as long as area families could afford to pay a teacher. In 1909, wanting to establish a more consistent school system, residents agreed to Fred B. Klein's proposal to establish the Divide Common School District. Named for a long ridge that divides the watersheds for the Llano River to the north and the Guadalupe River to the south and east, the district served families in a vast portion of western Kerr County. The dispersed community built a new school building on the Dee Hughs Ranch, and the district established a tax-supported, nine-month school year for students through the sixth grade. In 1936, several years after the state constructed Highway 41, district trustees built a new schoolhouse at this location on the F.B. Klein Ranch. They named the new facility the Divide School. From its beginnings in the 1880s, the Divide School has included vast acreage of ranch land, but has had no towns or cities within its boundaries. The district became independent in 1988, and it continues to serve families of western Kerr County. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lost Maples State Natural Area — 21 mi
  A canyon of the upper Sabinal where a relict stand of bigtooth maples turns color each autumn, a sight that drew crowds up a gravel road long before there was a park.

More markers nearby

• Y.O. Ranch — 0.4 mi
• Sunset Cemetery — 16 mi
• Hunt Japonica Cemetery — 16 mi
• The Dowdy Tragedy of 1878 — 17 mi