Site of Mormon Settlement

The mill is the part of this colony that outlasted the Mormons. They built a wooden dam on Hamilton Creek, a three-story mill with a twenty-six-foot waterwheel, and a sawmill, and the creek's year-round flow drove both. When Lyman Wight's group left in December 1853, Noah Smithwick bought the property, added a store and a school, and refitted the mill to grind only breadstuffs, which pushed nearby farmers toward wheat. The mill ran until 1901. A fire took the flume the next year, and local farmers hauled off the timbers for a barn.

What the plaque says

Site of Mormon Settlement Site of a settlement made in 1851 by 20 Mormon families under the leadership of Lyman Wight (1796-1858). Here they built homes, lumber mills, and shops for the manufacture of furniture. Abandoned in 1853. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 7.6 mi
  A cave carved by an underground river in the Hill Country, cleared of mud by hand in the 1930s and reached down 52 stone steps on a guided tour.
• Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge: Doeskin Ranch — 9.6 mi
  A free federal refuge north of Lake Travis kept for two songbirds that need old juniper and oak, with trails at the Doeskin Ranch unit near Bertram.
• Inks Lake State Park — 11 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 11 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church — 4.7 mi
• Marble Falls Depot — 4.8 mi
• Marble Falls School Building — 4.9 mi
• Granite Mountain — 5.0 mi