Site of Ivy Chapel and School

About three miles north of the Ivy site, another small community grew at a Llano River ford. Joseph A. Yates opened a post office on his land there in June 1907, on the road from London to Fredericksburg, and settlers held camp meetings under nearby live oaks. Tully J. Lange became the second and last postmaster in 1909. By the 1920s Yates was the center of a farming community in the Llano valley, with a store, a gas station and at least fifty-one people, and it was advertised to tourists. The post office closed in March 1930.

What the plaque says

Site of Ivy Chapel and School THE IVY COMMUNITY WAS NAMED FOR SAM, JACK AND BOB IVY, BROTHERS WHO MOVED TO KIMBLE COUNTY IN 1883. S. H. IVY DEEDED TWO ACRES OF LAND IN 1898 FOR A SCHOOL SITE AND A STRUCTURE WAS BUILT NEARBY. IN 1917 IVY DONATED ANOTHER TRACT OF LAND, AND A SCHOOLHOUSE WAS BUILT THAT YEAR. THE BUILDING ALSO SERVED AS A COMMUNITY CHAPEL AND PREACHERS HELD SERVICES ONCE OR TWICE A MONTH. THE BUILDING WAS THE SITE OF SOCIAL GATHERINGS, SUCH AS BOX SUPPERS, AND WAS USED AS A VOTING PLACE. ALTHOUGH IVY SCHOOL WAS CONSOLIDATED WITH NEARBY LONDON SCHOOL IN 1939, THE CHAPEL CONTINUES TO SERVE THE AREA. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kimble County Historical Museum — 11 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.
• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 16 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.
• Fort Mason — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Old Beef Trail Crossing — 2.8 mi
• John L. Jones Ranch — 3.0 mi
• Teacup Mountain — 5.1 mi
• Miller-Browning Colony — 7.0 mi