Texas Lions Camp

The commission that trained its clients at the camp began in 1931 as the State Commission for the Blind, created to rehabilitate blind people through physical and vocational training. A 1945 Vocational Rehabilitation Division brought federal funds for counseling, physical restoration, training and job placement. The agency grew from 151 employees in 1970 to more than 600 in 1978, when it served 25,000 clients, and took the name Texas Commission for the Blind in 1985. Its programs included the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center and a children's program that served 7,792 children in fiscal 1989.

What the plaque says

Texas Lions Camp Located on land once owned by Kerrville founder Joshua Brown, this has been the site of rehabilitative facilities since the 1920s, when the American Legion established a sanitorium here, followed by a United States Veterans Administration hospital in 1925. In 1948, as a nationwide polio epidemic raged, local Lion Jack Roe, working with the Kerrville Lions Club, promoted the concept of a special camp for children afflicted with the disease. A social worker with the Texas Department of Public Welfare, Roe had seen handicapped children turned away from other summer camps, and in response he made it his mission to create a place where they could experience the joys of nature at a camp designed for their unique needs. Roe and the local Lions Club members worked with other clubs around Texas to promote establishment of the camp, and in 1949 they received endorsement from the Lions International Convention. A statewide fundraising effort and the assistance of then-U.S. Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson led to the purchase of 504 acres of land at this site from the federal government in 1950. The camp officially opened on June 8, 1953, with 40 campers who participated in the formal dedication celebration on July 3, 1953. The camp also provided training facilities for clients of the Texas Commission for the Blind from 1958 to 1984, and since 1971 has included special programs for children with diabetes. It celebrated a milestone in 2003, marking service to a total of 50,000 children since its opening. The Texas Lions Camp has served as a place of education and respite for children with special needs for more than half a century. Its programs, still supported by Lions clubs throughout the state, reflect the Lions motto "We Serve" by providing campers with education, entertainment and memories to last their lifetimes. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 3.4 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Treue der Union Monument — 12 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 18 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Frontier Times Museum — 19 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

More markers nearby

• Brown Cemetery — 0.5 mi
• Gus F. Schreiner Home — 2.1 mi
• Schreiner College (Schreiner Institute) — 2.3 mi
• Wharton Cemetery — 2.4 mi