The Old Lime Kiln

This is a freestanding kiln of rough-cut limestone blocks, a rectangular chimney about 14 feet deep, 16 wide and 22 high at its tallest, built against a natural outcrop. Inside is a beehive-shaped brick lining, and some of the firebricks read LACLEDE St. Louis, which helps date the kiln to 1887. An 1887 report put output at 100 to 120 barrels a day. The lime became mortar for the courthouse, Coronal Institute and the 1887 Hofheinz Hotel before cheaper imported lime ended the business. The National Register lists it as the Belger-Cahill Lime Kiln.

What the plaque says

The Old Lime Kiln This site near the source of the San Marcos River was part of the Thomas J. Chambers grant of 1834. The tract was sold in 1848 to Gen. Edward Burleson (1798-1851), military and political leader in early Texas, who built a cabin nearby. A later owner, former Confederate Major W. O. Hutchison (1834-1900), sold 47.5 acres to J. J. Belger and James D. Cahill in 1887. They erected this brick and rock kiln, in which limestone was burned to produce lime for agriculture and construction. The operation ceased by 1910, when cheaper lime became available. The site is now (1976) owned by the Brown School. Incise in base: Marker Sponsors: Boy Scouts of America, Troop Number 112

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 0.5 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.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 15 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 15 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 — 18 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

• San Marcos Springs — 0.5 mi
• Post San Marcos — 0.5 mi
• San Marcos Mill Tract — 0.8 mi
• Site of San Marcos National Fish Hatchery — 1.0 mi