Kendall Masonic Lodge No. 897

The lodge's first decades followed the curve of Texas Masonry. After World War I, membership statewide climbed from 94,000 in 1920 to more than 134,000 in 1929. The Depression brought it down to 95,000 by 1937, and a number of local lodges lost the temples they had built in the 1920s, some losing as much as 60 percent of their members. Many returned as the war began, thousands more joined after 1945, and by 1961 membership reached 245,000. In 1948-49 the Grand Lodge built a 135,000-square-foot temple at Waco, with a library and museum open to the public.

What the plaque says

Kendall Masonic Lodge No. 897 Efforts to form a Masonic lodge in Boerne began in 1904. On December 7, 1905, the Grande Lodge of Texas granted a charter to Kendall Lodge No. 897, and A.J. Woods, L.W. King, Sr. and U.A. Shirar, Jr. served as the first principal officers. A fire in 1908 destroyed the lodge hall, and the group met in the county courthouse before moving their meetings to the Calrow Building, the city's post office. In 1911, local women chartered Boerne Chapter No. 200, Order of the Easter Star. The Masons moved to a new building, shared by the order, in 1969 and have since continued supporting the community and Masonic institutions with their time, funds and service. (2006)

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

• Boerne Chapter No. 200, O.E.S. — steps away
• Early Boerne Schoolhouses — 0.2 mi
• Early Kendall County Jails — 0.3 mi
• Kendall County — 0.3 mi