Site of Confederate Arms Factory

The rifles this shop made are better documented than the shop. N. B. Tanner & Company of Bastrop held a contract with the Texas Military Board, and a blacksmith partner, J. R. Nichols, forged the barrels. Tanner was the first of the state's contractors to deliver: seventeen rifles with bayonets on June 16, 1862, at $32.50 each. A fire took his shop that July. The firm finally delivered 294 rifles, the smallest total of the three Texas contractors, and collectors still debate what the rifle looked like. Tanner's name is often confused with a Liege gunmaker's.

What the plaque says

Site of Confederate Arms Factory Established by N. B. Tanner in 1862 for the manufacture of guns and bayonets. Continued in operation until 1865. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 1.9 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.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 20 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.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 25 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 26 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.

More markers nearby

• Primera Baptist Church — steps away
• Captain James Burleson — steps away
• Baron de Bastrop Monument — 0.2 mi
• Home Town of Texas Confederate Major Joseph D. Sayers — 0.2 mi