Hardscramble

Hardscramble is a stone building near Seguin that served as a home station for early Texas Rangers; accounts date it to 1841 and credit Ben McCulloch with building it. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011. A second, older ranger station and hospital of adobe, the Walnut Branch station at Court and Guadalupe streets, once stood in town and was used by Caldwell's, Callahan's and Hays's men, but it was unexpectedly torn down around 2000, and a city marker now names its site. The Hardscramble house has been restored and is private land.

What the plaque says

Hardscramble Home of Henry and Ben McCulloch, 1841-1853; of Nathaniel Benton, 1858; of Elijah V. Dale, 1871; famous Texas Rangers and veterans all of the Texas Revolution; bravery, skill and courage, were common attributes of men who dared the wilderness of Texas, but no patriots of Texas ever offered greater service than did the McCullochs, Benton and Dale. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gruene Historic District — 15 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 — 15 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.
• Palmetto State Park — 18 mi
  Dwarf palmettos, bogs and a spring-fed oxbow on the San Marcos River, with CCC stonework from the 1930s, a swamp an hour from Austin and San Antonio.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 18 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.

More markers nearby

• Tiemann School — 4.4 mi
• Battleground Prairie — 4.5 mi
• Jose Antonio Navarro Ranch — 5.2 mi
• Andrew Jackson Sowell — 5.3 mi