Lampasas County

The county took a while to settle its lines. The 1856 act answered a petition of 135 citizens and drew on Coryell County too. Two years later the northeastern corner went to Hamilton County. An 1873 act pushed the southern line thirty miles into Burnet County, and the next year it was put back. In 1887 the new Mills County took the northern and northwestern sections. With no money for a courthouse, the county kept its records in a small frame building, which burned in 1871; a courthouse and jail came in 1883.

What the plaque says

Lampasas County Formed from Travis and Bell counties; created February 1, 1856; organized March 10, 1856; The name Lampazos, first given to the river by the Spaniards, was suggested by the many cockle-burs in the region. First settlements about 1850; first railroad, 1882; county seat, Burleson, after 1856, called Lampasas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — 0.8 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 18 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Inks Lake State Park — 25 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 27 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• First State Meeting of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas — steps away
• Lampasas County, C.S.A. — steps away
• Hanna Springs — steps away
• Horrell-Higgins Feud — steps away