Granite Mountain

The Capitol's granite was finished in Burnet before it went to Austin. In 1885 Gustav Wilke, the subcontractor building the Capitol, laid a narrow-gauge railroad from Granite Mountain, fourteen miles south of Burnet, to the town. Just south of Burnet, inside the city limits, he built a yard where the stone was shaped, finished and fitted for its place in the building. Some 1,802 railroad carloads, 31,000 tons of granite, were worked there and shipped to Austin on the Austin and Northwestern.

What the plaque says

Granite Mountain This 866-foot dome of solid pink granite, covering 180 acres, contains the largest quarry of its kind in the United States. This mountain, like all granite formations, was once melted rock similar to lava. As the molten rock cooled thousands of feet below the earth's surface, it hardened into large crystals of quartz, feldspar and several dark-colored minerals. Wherever strength, durability and beauty of finish are required, granite is a favored building stone. The mountain was part of a grant made to Texas colonist William Slaughter. The site became famous commercially when a dispute arose in the 1880s over the type of stone to be used in the Capitol in Austin. The issue was settled in 1885 when Governor John Ireland resisted demands to use non-native limestone. Following this decision, a special track was built to haul the granite to the rail line in Burnet. The stone was generously donated to the state by quarry owners G. W. Lacy, N. L. Norton, and W. H. Westfall. Today granite from the quarry here is shipped to all parts of Texas, the U.S. and foreign countries for use in monuments, shafts, jetties, and buildings. It has been used in the Galveston sea wall and in new state office buildings near the Capitol in Austin. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 7.0 mi
  A cave carved by an underground river in the Hill Country, cleared of mud by hand in the 1930s and reached down 52 stone steps on a guided tour.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 10 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.
• Inks Lake State Park — 11 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge: Doeskin Ranch — 14 mi
  A free federal refuge north of Lake Travis kept for two songbirds that need old juniper and oak, with trails at the Doeskin Ranch unit near Bertram.

More markers nearby

• Marble Falls School Building — 1.0 mi
• St. Frederick Baptist Church — 1.6 mi
• Marble Falls Depot — 1.9 mi
• Michel's Drug Store — 1.9 mi