Kerrville Telephone Company

Texas telephones were less than twenty years old when Kerrville got its exchange. A. H. Belo of the Galveston News saw Bell's invention at the 1876 Philadelphia exposition and had a line strung from his office to his home on March 18, 1878. Galveston opened the state's first exchange on August 21, 1879, with Houston soon after. Dallas, Fort Worth and Waco exchanges opened in 1881, and the first long-distance line, Galveston to Houston, followed in 1883. By that August the state had 2,344 subscribers, and in 1884 the company began hiring women as operators.

What the plaque says

Kerrville Telephone Company A.C. Schriner and D.H. Comparette, Sr., started the Kerrville telephone exchange in 1896 with a handshake and $1,000. The first connection was between two Schreiner wool warehouses, and other businesses soon applied for service. In 1898, lines were extended from Kerrville to Rocksprings, Harper, Junction, and Medina. Many local ranches served as toll stations, a practice that continued until the 1950s. Incorporated in 1907, the Kerrville Telephone Company functioned for over a century as one of the few family owned and operated telephone companies in Texas. (1996)

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

• Christian Dietert Mill — steps away
• Kerrville Mountain Sun — steps away
• Notre Dame Catholic Church — steps away
• Notre Dame Catholic School — steps away