Site of Old Behrns West Texas Normal and Business College

Behrns's school went by several names before this one. He opened it near Tow, in northeastern Llano County, in 1889, and by 1894 it had moved sixteen miles northwest to Cherokee as Cherokee Academy, where he and four teachers offered eight courses of study. The cornerstone of the stone building was laid on April 8, 1895, and it opened the next year with fifteen recitation rooms and an auditorium for 800. In 1905 the Church of Christ bought the property for $15,000, but the payments lapsed and it reverted to Behrns.

What the plaque says

Site of Old Behrns West Texas Normal and Business College Opened 1895 by noted educator Francis Marion Behrns. A 3-story native blue marble main hall and frame dormitory were built by interested local citizens. Courses included mathematics, natural sciences, Latin, oratory, commercial subjects, literature, psychology, music and painting. Character building was stressed. Its graduates led in teaching and other professions. After the Behrns School closed in 1903, buildings were used by Cherokee Junior College; after 1921 by public schools. In 1945 fire destroyed old main hall. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Colorado Bend State Park — 14 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 16 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 26 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.
• Inks Lake State Park — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Baby Head Cemetery — 7.0 mi
• Valley Springs Primitive Baptist Church — 10 mi
• Community of Valley Spring — 11 mi
• Valley Spring Cemetery — 11 mi