Site of Sidney J. Pyland Blacksmith Shop

Pyland's forge stood among the businesses that made the square the center of the village. The John Henry Saunders store, bought in 1888, was rebuilt in stone in 1890 and housed the post office until the 1930s. The D'Spain Building went up in the 1920s. The mill on Cypress Creek ran on creek power until 1912, when a 20-horsepower engine was installed, and it stopped in 1925. Pyland married Nellie Ann Wimberley, a daughter of mill owner Zachary Wimberley, in 1897. John Will Pyland, who bought the mills in 1907, was the last millwright.

What the plaque says

Site of Sidney J. Pyland Blacksmith Shop While still a young boy, Sidney J. Pyland accompanied his parents on their journey from Tennessee to Wimberley about 1880. In 1895, at the age of 20, Sidney opened a blacksmith shop here, just above Cypress Creek on the busy village Square. He married Nellie Ann Wimberley in 1897. For 15 years Sidney forged horseshoes, built and repair wagons, and hammered out implements for area ranchers and farmers. In 1910 he moved his family and blacksmith shop intact to San Marcos. This site has continued to be a hub of business activity on Wimberley's Town Square. Incise: Sponsored by John and Mavis Woolsey

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 12 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Gruene Historic District — 18 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 21 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Pedernales Falls State Park — 23 mi
  The Pedernales stepping down over layered limestone east of Johnson City, a river that can turn from a placid stream to a torrent in minutes.

More markers nearby

• John Henry Saunders Homestead — steps away
• Wimberley Mills — steps away
• Winters-Wimberley House — steps away
• The Century-Old Wimberley Cemetery — 0.4 mi