Pontotoc and San Fernando Academy

Pontotoc once looked like a coming town. By 1890 it had two doctors and more than twenty businesses, shipping cotton, wool, hides and pecans. A typhoid epidemic in 1887 nearly wiped it out, and the cemetery filled so fast it was closed the next year. In 1890 backers proposed a new Mineral County with Pontotoc as its seat, but Mason residents petitioned against it. Three railroads missed the town by a few miles. A mica mine opened nearby in 1924, and in August 1947 a fire that began in a theater gutted five buildings.

What the plaque says

Pontotoc and San Fernando Academy (Site of Academy is 100 yards north) Pontotoc, settled about 1859, was named by first merchant, M. R. Kidd, for his former home town in Mississippi. Post office was opened 1878 in the B. J. Willis home, with Mrs. Willis postmaster. Founded by interested citizens, San Fernando Academy (probably named for nearby creek), opened 1883. Pupils (200 during academy's career) took regular subjects or courses leading toward teacher certificates. Principals were K. T. Hamilton and W. C. Roaten. After academy failed, site was sold by W. J. and B. J. Willis and used by the public school until 1927. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Mason — 19 mi
  A reconstructed officers' quarters on Post Oak Hill above Mason, standing where the army's stone fort was taken apart by the town that grew up below it.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 21 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.
• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 32 mi
  A limestone cave on the James River where about four million Mexican free-tailed bats raise their young each summer, kept open to visitors by a family's gift.

More markers nearby

• Chew Cemetery — 8.0 mi
• Wagram Cemetery — 9.1 mi
• Valley Spring Cemetery — 9.3 mi
• Community of Valley Spring — 10 mi