Isaac Byler Maxwell

Bluffton began when Billy Davis, Maxwell's relative, settled on the west bank of the Colorado in 1852. It grew on the trade of a nearby saltworks and several river crossings, gained a post office in 1873 and by 1883 was a stage stop between Burnet and Llano, with a blacksmith, a cotton gin, a hotel and saloons. That year a fire, said to have been started by drunken cowboys, destroyed the town, and it was rebuilt half a mile north. Bypassed by the railroad, it declined, and in 1937 Lake Buchanan covered the townsite; Bluffton moved five miles west.

What the plaque says

Isaac Byler Maxwell Isaac Byler "Ike" Maxwell was born April 21, 1837, in Ripley, Tennessee to Isaac D. and Nancy Love Byler Maxwell. In 1844, after his mother died, his family moved to Bluffton, Arkansas. He moved from there to this area in 1854, naming the land Bluffton after his former home. After serving as a scout for frontier units during the Civil War, he was a justice of the peace for three terms. Later elected to the state legislature, he helped arrange the excavation of granite for the state Capitol. He also served as a Church of Christ minister. When he died in 1931, he was reportedly the oldest living Llano County pioneer. Recorded - 2003

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Llano County Courthouse Square — 9.8 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 11 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.
• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 15 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.

More markers nearby

• Lone Grove School — 2.4 mi
• Board Branch Cemetery — 2.4 mi
• Tow Cemetery — 5.1 mi
• Llano County — 7.9 mi