Site of Creed Taylor Ranch Home

Taylor's house anchored a community named for a later neighbor. In the early 1870s Munroe McDonald, James H. Parker and Noah Nox settled 4.5 miles east on the Little Devils River. Nox, from Illinois, ran a store that became the Noxville post office in December 1879, with his wife, Persis, as postmistress. The stone school, probably built in 1880, was the county's first; classes met there until 1940, when the area joined the Harper school district. In December 1911 postmaster Jason A. Milan moved the post office and store, and with them the town, west to the James River.

What the plaque says

Site of Creed Taylor Ranch Home A two-story ranch house of native stone was built here in 1869-71 by Creed Taylor, veteran of Texas War for Independence. Considered the finest home west of San Antonio, it burned in 1926. Rebuilt by Dillard Stapp, it again burned down in 1956. Taylor (1819-1906) fought in the Battle of Gonzales in 1835, and later in the Battle of Concepcion and the Siege of Bexar. Joined the Texas Rangers in 1840 and fought in Plum Creek Battle. In 1841, he joined Rangers, serving under Capt. Jack Hays in Bandera Pass Indian fight, Battle of Salado, and the Mexican War of 1846. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 15 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.
• Kimble County Historical Museum — 19 mi
  A free county museum in Junction, the town at the meeting of the North and South Llano, with the papers, photographs and tools of a ranching county.
• Fort Mason — 29 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.
• Schreiner Mansion — 31 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.

More markers nearby

• Creed Taylor — 5.4 mi
• Spanish Road to Santa Fe, 1808 — 7.4 mi
• Johnson Fork Colony — 9.5 mi
• Site of Ivy Chapel and School — 13 mi