Site of Coronal Institute

In 1869-70 the school had six men and two women on its faculty and 130 students. Chartered in 1879, it peaked about 1900 with twelve teachers, a library of 900 volumes and property worth $35,000, though enrollment never grew enough to justify the investment. Students could study Latin, German and Spanish, physics, chemistry, bookkeeping, agriculture, domestic science, drawing and music. The school was affiliated with the University of Texas and Southwestern University, and nearly 500 students received high school diplomas between 1880 and its closing.

What the plaque says

Site of Coronal Institute Established 1868 by educator O. N. Hollingsworth. A private school, it was coeducational and offered military training to boys. So-named because it was a Coronal (crown) atop this hill. In 1870 the Rev. R. H. Belvin bought school, but sold it to the Methodist Church in 1876. First structure, of limestone, burned in 1890. A handsome, 3-story building soon replaced it. Hundreds of students attended institute, which helped pioneer education in southwest Texas. The Methodist Church closed school, 1918. It was sold, 1925, to San Marcos School District. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 1.3 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 14 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.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 17 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.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Eddie Durham — 0.3 mi
• Founding of the First Methodist Church — 0.3 mi
• The Courthouses of Hays County — 0.4 mi
• William W. Moon — 0.6 mi