Early Boerne Schoolhouses

Schooling across the county came slowly. The first schools met in homes or donated space, and the first public schools opened at Comfort in 1856 and Boerne in 1857, but the district system the legislature authorized in 1854 did not take effect until the 1870s or 1880s. Shortly after 1900 the county had twenty-two common school districts, and only better roads in the 1930s and 1940s allowed consolidation. Farm work often came first: as late as 1940, fewer than 9 percent of residents over twenty-five had finished high school. By 1980 the share was nearly 65 percent.

What the plaque says

Early Boerne Schoolhouses The origins of public schools in Boerne date to 1873, when the Boerne Gesangenverein donated land on which to erect a schoolhouse. A two-room stone building was completed in 1874 and served children in all grades. A small frame building was added to the property around the turn of the century, and the upper and lower grades were separated. In 1910 a new two-story stone school was built. It served students of all ages until a high school was built on Johns Road in 1929. The 1910 building was sold to the City of Boerne Utilities in 1951. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Treue der Union Monument — 16 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Frontier Times Museum — 21 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 22 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 24 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.

More markers nearby

• Early Kendall County Jails — steps away
• Kendall County — steps away
• German Music in Boerne — 0.2 mi
• Kendall Masonic Lodge No. 897 — 0.2 mi