Kerr County

Ranching carried the county after the Civil War. Farms and ranches doubled in the 1860s and again in the 1870s, and sheep tripled in the 1870s to 15,504. The railroad reached Kerrville in 1887. Cattle peaked about 1900 at some 56,000 head, and by 1910 sheep outnumbered them. Goats went from 4,653 in 1900 to 63,508 in 1920. In the 1920s sheep tripled again to 154,468 and goats rose to nearly 160,000; in 1930 the county shipped over a million pounds of wool and 667,000 pounds of mohair, and many called Kerrville the Mohair Capital of the World.

What the plaque says

Kerr County Formed from Bexar County - Created January 26, 1856 - Organized March 22, 1856. Named in honor of James Kerr, 1790-1850; the first American settler on the Guadalupe River; general manager of DeWitt's Colony; signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence; member of the Third Texas Congress. County Seat, Kerrsville (afterwards Kerrville), 1856-1860; Comfort, 1860-1862; Kerrville, since.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — steps away
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Treue der Union Monument — 15 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.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 19 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.
• Fort Martin Scott — 22 mi
  An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.

More markers nearby

• James Kerr — steps away
• Early Settlers of Kerr County — steps away
• Kerrville Mountain Sun — steps away
• Kerrville — steps away