Marble Falls Factory Site

Johnson saw power in the falls in 1854, and the river resisted for seventy years. The legislature authorized a dam near Marble Falls for a mill in 1871, but nothing came of it. The cotton and woolen mill company built its factory in 1895 and then could not raise money for machinery. A dam begun below the town in 1910 was never finished. Only in 1925 was a dam built to power the textile mill, and Insull companies used it in 1935 to supply the Hamilton Dam project. Max Starcke Dam later drowned the falls themselves.

What the plaque says

Marble Falls Factory Site The potential of water power on the Colorado River led town developer Gen. Adam R. Johnson and Farmers Alliance members to build a cotton mill on this site in the 1890s. The two-story stone factory, 300 ft. long and 100 ft. wide, was erected for the Marble Falls Cotton and Woolen Co., formed in 1892. New machinery run by hydroelectric power was installed by the Marble Falls Textile Mills Co. In the 1920s, woolen goods, surgical gauze, and air conditioners were made here before the factory was gutted by fire in 1964 and razed in 1971. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 9.1 mi
  A cave carved by an underground river in the Hill Country, cleared of mud by hand in the 1930s and reached down 52 stone steps on a guided tour.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 13 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.
• Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge: Doeskin Ranch — 13 mi
  A free federal refuge north of Lake Travis kept for two songbirds that need old juniper and oak, with trails at the Doeskin Ranch unit near Bertram.
• Inks Lake State Park — 13 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.

More markers nearby

• Michel's Drug Store — 0.3 mi
• St. Frederick Baptist Church — 0.6 mi
• Marble Falls Depot — 0.6 mi
• St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church — 0.9 mi