Knippa Trap Rock Plant

The quarry brought Knippa new people as well as new business. The Handbook of Texas dates the mine's opening to around 1905 and says it drew Mexican laborers to the area. Because the pit had first been dug in search of gold, it was said that all of the railroad ballast from it carried a small amount of gold. By 1914 the town had about fifty residents, telephone connections, two cotton gins, two general stores and two lumber companies. A one-room school built in 1927 served as a catechetical center and was the site of many Mexican-American social events.

What the plaque says

Knippa Trap Rock Plant Volcanic lava deposited here more than 60 million years ago cooled and hardened over time to form basalt, a dark igneous rock also known as trap rock. M. B. (Pete) Walcott purchased acreage here about 1904 and in 1907 formed the Genevieve Mining Co. to search for gold. Although little gold was found, substantial quantities of high quality trap rock were discovered. The Texas Trap Rock Company established a quarry about 1911 and shipments of rock began in 1912. A large highly-visible screening house was completed in 1914. By 1919 Knippa's trap rock plant, the largest in Texas at that time, was capable of producing about 100,000 tons of trap rock per year. The company transported the trap rock by spur line to the Southern Pacific Railroad in nearby Knippa. The company and its employees became an integral part of the community. Knippa High School named its football team the "Rockcrushers" in 1946. The trap rock operation, purchased by White's Mine Company in 1968, was acquired by Vulcan Materials Company in 1987. Trap rock has been applied to various uses such as railroad ballast, decorative stone, and as insulation material. Its historic and primary use, however, has been as a road paving material. 1994

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 9.9 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 10 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
• Fort Inge Historical Site — 10 mi
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.
• Garner State Park — 22 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.

More markers nearby

• Town of Knippa — 0.8 mi
• Emmanuel Lutheran Church — 0.9 mi
• Garner Army Air Field — 7.4 mi
• USS Uvalde — 9.1 mi