Mosty Brothers Nursery

The exposition grounds the Mostys planted were won by Dallas in a three-city contest. Dallas, Houston and San Antonio all sought the central exposition of the 1936 Centennial; the commission chose Dallas, though it had the least historical claim, because it offered the largest cash commitment, $7,791,000, the existing State Fair facility with room to grow, and unified leadership under bankers Robert L. Thornton, Fred F. Florence and Nathan Adams. The legislature and Congress each appropriated $3,000,000. The idea of a centennial went back to a speech by James Stephen Hogg about 1900.

What the plaque says

MOSTY BROTHERS NURSERY A son of Belgian immigrants, Leander A. Mosty worked as a cattle driver and broker in Kansas before migrating to Kerr County in 1897. Sensing a market for fruit and pecan trees in the sparsely treed area, Mosty and his wife, Elizabeth (Bean), a Lampasas native, moved their family to a tract along the Guadalupe River, where the Kerrville orchards and nursery, later known as Mosty Brothers Nursery, began in 1898. After being certified by the state of Texas in 1907, the nursery expanded to center point the next year. Along with several ornamental shrubs, Mosty developed new varieties of cling peach, freestone peach, and pecan trees, all of which bear the Mosty name. After his death in 1917, Mosty's sons Lee and Harvey turned the business into one of the largest wholesale nurseries in the southwest with one of the region's largest greenhouses. In 1927, Lee Mosty built his family an eight-room house in the center point property's pecan orchard. In the 1930s, Lee and Harvey helped organize the Texas association of nurserymen. They also provided native plants to landscape the Texas centennial central exposition grounds, now the Texas State Fair Grounds, in Dallas. After Lee's death in 1964, his sons Robert Lee, Raymond, and C.H. (Scott) continued to develop their business and support the Texas horticulture industry. The Kerrville nursery closed in 1985, but Mosty family descendants, now in the fifth generation, continue to operate the center point location. One of the community's iconic businesses since 1908, the nursery continues to contribute to the economy and culture of center point. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Treue der Union Monument — 7.1 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.
• Schreiner Mansion — 9.9 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Frontier Times Museum — 15 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Center Point School — 0.3 mi
• Center Point Christian Church — 0.4 mi
• Center Point United Methodist Church — 0.4 mi
• Rising Star Lodge No. 429, A.F. & A.M. — 0.6 mi