Rocksprings Telephone Company

Claud Gilmer, who led the company from 1951, gave his name to one of the largest changes in Texas schools. After a 1947 deadlock over teachers' minimum pay, the legislature set up a study committee later named for Representative Gilmer and Senator A. M. Aikin Jr. Its three bills passed in 1949 over letter campaigns and radio attacks, after the first all-night committee hearing in the legislature's history. The Gilmer-Aikin Laws replaced the elected state superintendent with an appointed commissioner and consolidated 4,500 school districts into 2,900.

What the plaque says

Rocksprings Telephone Company (Southwest Texas Telephone Company) Local businessman Street Gilmer and D. H. Comparette of Kerrville built a long distance telephone line from Rocksprings to Kerrville in 1898. They installed the town's first telephone in Newton & Smart's store. The phone was later moved to Gilmer's Drug Store; this marked the beginning of the Rocksprings Telephone Company. Telephone customers in the early 20th century used crank-handled magneto wall phones to contact telephone operators. As many as seventeen parties shared each phone line. A 1927 tornado impaired many of the Rocksprings lines and devastated the town. Telephone company employee Foster Owens left his home in the unstable weather to clear the toll lines by hand and call for assistance from Kerrville. Following the tornado, the telephone company built a new rock building. The 1950s brought major changes for the growing company. Street Gilmer died in February 1951 and his son Claud, a former state legislator and speaker of the House, became president of the company. In 1952 the Rocksprings exchange purchased the Nueces Canyon Telephone Company. Claud Gilmer's son became general manager in 1953. Over the next decade, the company acquired the Utopia, D'Hanis, and Vinegarroon telephone exchanges. By 1958 every exchange in the company had been converted to the dial system. The Rocksprings and Nueces Canyon Telephone Company became the Southwest Texas Telephone Company in 1983. It continues to be a family business: two of Street Gilmer's grandchildren and five great-grandchildren served on the board of directors one hundred years after the company's inception. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Devil's Sinkhole State Natural Area — steps away
  A 140-foot shaft into a cavern outside Rocksprings, seen only on guided tours from a platform at the rim as some three million bats spiral out on summer evenings.
• Real County Historical Museum — 33 mi
  A small county museum in Leakey, at the head of the Frio Canyon, with a log-cabin parlor, an 1880s horse-drawn hearse, a wool and mohair shearing machine and 1910s jail cells.

More markers nearby

• Edwards County — steps away
• Gilmer Hotel — steps away
• First Methodist Church of Rocksprings — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Rocksprings — 0.3 mi