Riley's Tavern

The tavern outlasted the town around it. Hunter took its name from Andrew Jackson Hunter, who settled nearby in 1867 on a thousand-acre cotton farm, and the townsite was laid out when the International and Great Northern arrived in 1880. By 1890 some 200 people had two saloons, a barbershop, a blacksmith, a wagonmaker, a meat market and a gin. Edward M. House and Harry Landa formed the Hunter Cotton Gin Company in 1894. As cotton declined the town emptied: the depots were gone by 1947, the school consolidated in 1949 and the post office closed in 1953.

What the plaque says

Riley's Tavern Rileys Tavern, Hunters oldest business, is housed in a circa 1895 building that was the Galloway Saloon and later home to the Bernardino Sanchez family. In 1933, Texas was the 23rd state to vote for the repeal of Prohibition. Shortly thereafter, J.C. Riley and his uncle drove a Model T to the steps of the state capitol in Austin to obtain the first license issued in Texas number 00001. At the stroke of midnight on Sep. 14, 1933, 3.2% beer could be sold and Comal County had sufficient stock available to meet the demand. Riley operated the business until his death in 1992. His tavern, midway between Austin and San Antonio, has been a popular destination for decades of travelers, with many from neighboring dry counties. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gruene Historic District — 6.8 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 8.2 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 9.6 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 21 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.

More markers nearby

• King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road — 1.0 mi
• Pitts Cemetery — 3.0 mi
• Stringtown — 3.2 mi
• King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road — 3.4 mi