Hancock Springs

The water here rises from cavernous Marble Falls limestone, and from 1886 to 1975 the springs averaged about seventy gallons a second. They drew travelers long before settlement: an expedition led by Juan Antonio Bustillo y Cevallos probably stopped at them in 1732, and earlier accounts suggest the Aguayo expedition of 1721 found mineral springs in the area on its way to East Texas. Lampasas grew up around these springs in the 1850s and still draws its water supply from them, the same water that made the town a health resort in the 1880s.

What the plaque says

Hancock Springs First white settlers in 1850's found Indians using curative waters here. Town was quickly developed around the springs. Stage and freight routes and many cattle drives came this way. The springs took the name of landowner, John Hancock. On a hill to the north about 1882, promoters of the Santa Fe Railway built a 200-room "Park Hotel," with boardwalk to the springs, bathhouses, many other luxuries. It gained wide fame as South's finest health resort. Closed in a few years as a hotel, it later housed Centenary College, until it burned in 1895. Area is now a city park. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — steps away
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 18 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Inks Lake State Park — 25 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.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• The 1957 Flood — steps away
• Hancock Springs Bathhouse — 0.2 mi
• Hostess House — 0.2 mi
• Site of Park Hotel — 0.3 mi