The Courthouses of Hays County

The county these buildings governed grew from 387 people in 1850 to 2,126 in 1860. Edward Burleson built its first sawmill in 1848, W. A. Thompson its first cotton gin in the early 1850s, and between 1855 and 1885 Ezekiel Nance built five gins, five gristmills, a sawmill, a shingle mill and a beef packery. Johnson Institute drew students from across Central Texas from 1852 to 1872. After the war Col. George F. Snyder started the county's first newspaper, the Pioneer, and in 1867 George Neill drove the first herd of Hays County cattle to Kansas.

What the plaque says

The Courthouses of Hays County When Hays County originated in 1848, its one public building was a log church-schoolhouse that had to serve as the courthouse, along with its other uses. Although the San Marcos townsite, platted in 1851, contained a court square donated to the county, the forfeiture of a $2,000.00 criminal bond later gave the county funds for building, and in 1861 officials employed contractor C. F. Millett to erect on the Square a 36 x 40-foot, 2-story frame courthouse with a hearing room, jury rooms, and 4 offices. That pine building burned in 1868, and county officials operated from rented quarters until a courthouse of soft, locally quarried limestone was completed in 1871. Damaged by earth shiftings, that 2-story, 45 x 53-foot building was razed (1881) and replaced by a 50 x 60-foot, 2-story building of harder limestone designed by F. e. Ruffini, architect for University of Texas buildings and for courthouses in several other counties. After that 1882-83 structure lost its top story in a fire on Feb. 28, 1908, it also was razed. The fourth and present courthouse, in eclectic style, was designed by C. H. Page & Brother, of Austin. Completed and accepted by the county court on Dec. 13, 1909, it has had interior alterations; it was restored in 1972. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 1.0 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 — 14 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.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 16 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.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Founding of the First Methodist Church — steps away
• Eddie Durham — 0.2 mi
• William W. Moon — 0.2 mi
• Site of Hays County's First Public Building — 0.2 mi