The Bastrop Advertiser

The paper has outlived its founders and become the county's archive. More than five thousand issues are digitized in the Portal to Texas History. Over the years it printed Cayton Erhard's memoirs of early Republic military expeditions, followed local men who became state figures, among them George Washington Jones and Joseph D. Sayers, and covered the building of Camp Swift. In 1955 it joined the county historical society in publishing In the Shadow of the Lost Pines, a history Handbook of Texas writers cite for Bastrop County. The state Senate marked its 150th anniversary in 2003.

What the plaque says

The Bastrop Advertiser In June 1852, Bastrop's Colorado Reveille Newspaper ended its brief run. In December of that year, William J. Cain, a young printer from Mississippi, bought the press and printing materials and started the Bastrop Advertiser. The newspaper began as a weekly publication from a shop on Main Street in March 1853. Thomas C. Cain took over the business when his brother retired, and his son, T.W. Cain, followed him as owner and editor. In 1920, Cain sold the paper, which was later owned by the J.O. Smith Family of Elgin. Except for a period during the Civil War, the paper has continuously served Bastrop residents. Through the years, the paper has focused on the area's news and rich history. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 1.9 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 20 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 25 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 26 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.

More markers nearby

• Baron de Bastrop Monument — steps away
• Home Town of Texas Confederate Major Joseph D. Sayers — steps away
• Captain James Burleson — steps away
• First National Bank of Bastrop — steps away