Dunbar School

The school building itself is gone. A fire in the mid-1980s destroyed it, and one structure from the campus survives, the Home Economics Building, which the National Register listed in 2024. The campus took the Dunbar name in 1961 and became part of Dunbar Park after integration in 1964. A first phase of restoration stabilized the pier-and-beam foundation in May 2024, and later work repaired the roof, siding and windows. The city has said it hopes to reopen the building as a community space for the Dunbar neighborhood, and a Dunbar History Walk honoring neighborhood figures began in 2026.

What the plaque says

Dunbar School Private instruction for black children in San Marcos may have begun as early as 1847, but the first public school was founded in 1877 with 50 pupils. The school was moved to this 7.3 acre site in 1918. Many graduates continued into higher education, and some returned as teachers, including Ola Lee Coleman, whose 36-year career was the longest here. In 1961 the school was renamed for Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906), noted black author. This facility closed with the completion of school integration in the 1960s. In 1973 Mr. and Mrs. C. D. Marshall purchased the site for use as a city park. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 1.6 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 13 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 16 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 17 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church NBC of San Marcos — 0.2 mi
• Ulysses Cephas — 0.3 mi
• Wesley Chapel A. M. E. Church — 0.3 mi
• Eddie Durham — 0.4 mi