Site of Prairie Mountain School

Before the school gave the community its name, the place was known variously as Starks, Putnam and Hickory. When a rural school was built on the Roundtree Ranch in 1906, the settlement took the name of nearby Prairie Mountain, and its first teacher was Martha Ward. The breakup of the Roundtree Ranch into smaller holdings in 1913 and 1914 brought in more families. About twenty families kept up the community's social life into the 1970s, and the stone ranch house and barn became county landmarks. Prairie Mountain lies on Farm Road 2323, twenty miles southwest of Llano.

What the plaque says

Site of Prairie Mountain School German immigrants and pioneer settlers established the Prairie Mountain community, once known as Starks, in the mid 1800s. In 1906 the Putman School near Hickory Creek relocated to this site, and was renamed Prairie Mountain School. Community members built a one-room schoolhouse, which also served as a place of worship, on land leased from Bettie A. Rountree. A larger building, constructed in 1924, served school children until Prairie Mountain consolidated with the Llano school district in 1948. The Marschall family later conveyed the land to the community. The last worship service was held here in 1970, but the building continued to serve as the Prairie Mountain community center. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 5.1 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 18 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.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 20 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 20 mi
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.

More markers nearby

• Enchanted Rock — 5.7 mi
• Herman and Willie Lehmann — 7.6 mi
• Old Cherry Spring School (Das Alte Schulhaus) — 8.1 mi
• Homesite of John O. Meusebach — 8.2 mi