Site of Old Taylor School

The school stood in the Sabinal valley, along a river that starts in springs flowing from slabs of limestone in what is now Lost Maples State Natural Area, seven miles north of Vanderpool. The Sabinal runs southeast to the Balcones Escarpment, turns east and then west, and reaches the Frio ten miles south of the town of Sabinal, sixty miles in all; in places it sinks underground and rises again. Hale, Hollow, Can, Mill, Little and Onion creeks feed it. A well-known Indian trail along it appears on early Spanish maps as the Comanche Trail.

What the plaque says

Site of Old Taylor School Founded 1883, named for Henry Taylor. He, Gid Thompson and other early settlers gave land and founded school. First trustees were D. Harper, H. Kennedy, H. Taylor. In the first one-room frame building, desks and recitation benches were home made. After it burned, two more were built before consolidation with Utopia, 1937. Miss Sue Harper, Frank Robinson, and "Miss Mattie" Noel listed among outstanding teachers. This was community center; weekly Literary Society, Sunday school, church met here. This marker given by and in memory of former pupils. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lost Maples State Natural Area — 12 mi
  A canyon of the upper Sabinal where a relict stand of bigtooth maples turns color each autumn, a sight that drew crowds up a gravel road long before there was a park.
• Garner State Park — 13 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.
• Real County Historical Museum — 14 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.

More markers nearby

• Jones Cemetery — 1.7 mi
• Utopia — 2.8 mi
• Utopia Baptist Church — 2.9 mi
• William Ware — 3.8 mi