Doss School

Doss grew from a mill. John E. and Thomas C. Doss founded it in 1849 and in 1856 built a gristmill and distillery on Threadgill Creek, later adding a dam and sawmill. August Steiness bought the dam in 1864, tore down the distillery and enlarged the gristmill, and a room on his house served as the mail station. The mill later passed to William F. Lange, whose dam was rebuilt by stonemason Philip Buchmeyer in 1872-75. A post office called Lange opened in 1898, took the name Doss in 1907 and moved to the townsite two miles south.

What the plaque says

Doss School One of the state's few remaining rural school systems, Doss School began in 1884 on Doss-Spring Creek Road (3.5 mi. S). Ten years later, land at this site was donated by Tom Nixon, and a small frame structure was built. In 1905, a limestone schoolhouse was built, and in 1927 the present building was added. Over the years, the Onion Creek and Squaw Creek schools have merged with Doss, but the school has maintained its small student-teacher ratio. An important part of the Doss community, the school has played a significant role in the history of education in Gillespie County. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 15 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.
• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 19 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.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 19 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 20 mi
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.

More markers nearby

• Squaw Creek Primitive Baptist Church — 0.6 mi
• Lange's Mill — 2.3 mi
• Squaw Creek Cemetery — 4.9 mi
• The Marschall-Meusebach Cemetery — 8.3 mi