Monodale Community

Edward Mandell House, adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, owned land here and visited only occasionally. The Handbook says he inherited a large farm at Monadale from his grandfather and that the place was renamed from Stringtown for his daughter Mona. It says House offered ten acres for a school, but residents wanted the building elsewhere; the plaque says he gave one acre. A gin was built in 1899, and the Handbook adds French immigrants to the plaque's Swedish and Czech farmers. The school joined Hutto's system in 1949.

What the plaque says

Monodale Community When Texas was readmitted to the Union in 1870, the land in this area was owned by three families, including that of nationally known political statesman Edward Mandell House. Known as Stringtown, the area was so well populated by 1893 that House donated an acre of land for a school. Settlers pooled their funds for a building, naming the school and community Monadale in honor of House's daughter. A clerical error led to the common spelling Monodale. The people of Monodale community were cotton farmers, chiefly Swedish and Czechoslovakian immigrants. The Monodale School District served the area's children until it was consolidated with Hutto in 1949. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 9.2 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 9.3 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• The Round Rock — 11 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Mount Bonnell — 23 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.

More markers nearby

• Hutto Evangelical Lutheran Church — 3.0 mi
• Hutto — 3.2 mi
• Jonah Cemetery — 3.5 mi
• Community of Jonah — 3.6 mi