Kerrville Mountain Sun

Grinstead, a Kentucky-born printer, came to Kerrville from Indian Territory. He moved in 1899 hoping the Hill Country's climate would cure his ailing wife; she died within months, but he stayed. As editor he wrote bold, plainspoken editorials and promoted the town, and he is credited with coining the term Hill Country. He was mayor from 1902 to 1904, when the first streets were paved, and in the legislature from 1907 he wrote the bill for a state tuberculosis sanatorium at Carlsbad. After selling the paper he wrote more than thirty western novels.

What the plaque says

Kerrville Mountain Sun The "Kerrville Mountain Sun" can trace its history to an 1870s publication known as "The Frontiersman." Later called "The News," "The Eye," and "The Paper," the "Mountain Sun" was given its current name by J. E. Grinstead after he purchased the newspaper in 1898. An adventurer, writer, and early photographer, Grinstead sold the "Mountain Sun" in 1917. In 1919 it came under the full ownership of brothers W. A. and Clarence Salter. Over the years, the "Kerrville Mountain Sun" has provided a significant service to the citizens of Kerrville. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986 Incise on base: Wife, son, grandson of W. A. Salter have continued ownership

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 — 14 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.
• Frontier Times Museum — 22 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

More markers nearby

• James Kerr — steps away
• Kerr County — steps away
• Early Settlers of Kerr County — steps away
• Kerrville Telephone Company — steps away