The Badger Building

The building went up just as the railroad remade Burnet. The Austin and Northwestern reached town in April 1882, and Burnet became the railhead for the country to the west, Llano, Mason and San Saba among it. On June 3, 1885, the Southern Produce Company shipped 157,000 pounds of wool from Burnet, reportedly the third-largest wool shipment in Texas to that time. Citizens had voted to incorporate in 1876, but it took a second election in 1883 to make it official. When the line reached Llano in 1892, Burnet slipped back into a farming and livestock town.

What the plaque says

The Badger Building Completed about 1883, this two-story limestone structure is representative of other commercial buildings located on the Courthouse Square in the 1880s. It was built for local financier Dr. W. H. Westfall and Captain Brandt Badger (b. 1839), a native of Georgia who had served in the Confederate Army from Texas during the Civil War. Badger and his son Walter operated a wholesale and retail drugstore on the ground floor. The second floor area, divided into five rooms, was leased for use as office space. Badger sold the business in 1885 and later, in partnership with Adam R. Johnson, helped establish the nearby town of Marble Falls (14 mi. S). For the latter part of the nineteenth century the structure housed a hardware store. In 1903 the newly formed Burnet National Bank was located here and remained at this site until it closed as a result of the economic depression of the 1930s. The Badger Building has also been used by the State Parks Board, the Burnet Rural Telephone Company, the Farm Loan Association, doctors, lawyers, and various businesses. From 1948 to 1959 it served as the Burnet Post Office. In 1966 the structure was occupied by the Youth and Community Center. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Inks Lake State Park — 8.6 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.
• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 8.9 mi
  A cave carved by an underground river in the Hill Country, cleared of mud by hand in the 1930s and reached down 52 stone steps on a guided tour.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 9.7 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.
• Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge: Doeskin Ranch — 13 mi
  A free federal refuge north of Lake Travis kept for two songbirds that need old juniper and oak, with trails at the Doeskin Ranch unit near Bertram.

More markers nearby

• General Adam R. Johnson — steps away
• Burnet County — steps away
• The Burnet Bulletin — steps away
• Red Brick School — 0.3 mi