Site of Nix Mill

Barksdale got telephone service soon after 1900, a Baptist church in 1906 and a bank in 1907, and it held at about 200 people through the mid-1940s. Then it thinned: five businesses in 1948, about 150 people by 1950, a Methodist church in 1950 and a new high school building in 1957, and by 1973 only the school, two businesses, several houses, a cemetery and seventy-one residents. Housing subdivisions reversed that in the late 1980s. Barksdale had 617 people in 1990 and 1,081 in 2000.

What the plaque says

Site of Nix Mill (1885 - 1926) Built by John L. Nix (1842-1915) to cut rawhide lumber, grind corn and wheat, and gin cotton. Upper floor housed gin; lower, grist mill. On east side was sawmill with wood furnace and boiler to furnish steam power. Furnace was fed cedar and oak wood. Spanish oaks, white oaks, and elms from Nueces River watercourse were sawed into the rawhide lumber from which were built town's wagon yard feed stalls, a dance hall, and other structures. After Nix, successive owners were J. L. Jackson, W. D. Hutcherson, Edward Miller, Matthew Taylor, and O. C. Henderson. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Real County Historical Museum — 16 mi
  A small county museum in Leakey, at the head of the Frio Canyon, with a log-cabin parlor, an 1880s horse-drawn hearse, a wool and mohair shearing machine and 1910s jail cells.
• Garner State Park — 19 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.
• Devil's Sinkhole State Natural Area — 23 mi
  A 140-foot shaft into a cavern outside Rocksprings, seen only on guided tours from a platform at the rim as some three million bats spiral out on summer evenings.
• Kickapoo Cavern State Park — 26 mi
  A lightly developed former ranch on the Kinney-Edwards line with twenty caves, a Saturday tour into a 1,400-foot cavern and a summer bat flight from Stuart Bat Cave.

More markers nearby

• Dixie Settlement — steps away
• The Pioneer Coalsons — steps away
• Camp Fawcett — 0.8 mi
• Site of the Mission San Lorenzo de La Santa Cruz — 3.5 mi