Old Dime Box

The plaque tells how the dime got into the box; the name itself came later, by accident. Brown's Mill had a post office from 1877 until December 1883, and when it reopened the next spring, frequent confusion with Brownsville got the town renamed Dime Box. A Union School opened in January 1874 and later housed one of the earliest Presbyterian churches in Texas. In 1913 the Southern Pacific built three miles southeast, the depot took the name, and this site became Old Dime Box, with a Sons of Herman lodge, Trinity Lutheran Church and the Hannes Cemetery.

What the plaque says

Old Dime Box County's second oldest community. Located in Texas founder Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colony. First known as Browne's Mills. Present name derived from practice of leaving dimes in box at Joseph S. Browne's mill so that postman John W. Ratliff would bring items from Giddings to community members. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 11 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 19 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 24 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Bastrop State Park — 31 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.

More markers nearby

• King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road — 3.8 mi
• Site of Camino Real — 4.6 mi
• King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road — 5.0 mi
• William W. Hawkins — 5.7 mi