Pedernales Rural School

Behind the school stood a settlement built around one man's offer. Dr. Wilhelm Keidel, Gillespie County's first physician and its first county judge, left Fredericksburg and promised free treatment to anyone who came with him to the Pedernales River. By 1850 the settlement had forty-four residents, among them the painters Hermann Lungkwitz and Friedrich Richard Petri. Keidel treated Native patients, who paid by hanging venison or turkeys in nearby trees, and he planted hackberries along the local roads. In 1854 he hosted the meeting that planned Live Oak School, and he treated both sides in the Civil War.

What the plaque says

Pedernales Rural School The Pedernales community, established here by German immigrant farmers in the 1840s, was joined with the Live Oak community to form a school district in 1854. Sometime prior to 1875 a native stone schoolhouse was built at this site. State funds and tuition supported the 1-teacher, 7-grade school. Picnics on "schulpruefung" (final exam day), plays, Christmas programs, and music practices became traditional activities at the school. Falling student enrollment during World War II led to the school's closing in 1945. The school building was converted to residential use in the 1980s. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 6.5 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 6.5 mi
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.
• Fort Martin Scott — 6.7 mi
  An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 11 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

• Guenther's Live Oak Mill — 2.6 mi
• Hill Crest Cemetery — 4.1 mi
• Baethge-Behrend Homestead — 4.5 mi
• Philipp Hartmann Family Cemetery — 4.9 mi