The Village of South Gabriel

South Gabriel tried to buy the railroad. When the Austin and Northwestern was planning its route from Austin to Burnet, residents offered the company $3,000 to build through their town. It declined and passed about two miles away, and most people moved their homes and businesses to Bertram. The school held on for a while: enrollment fell from sixty in 1896 to thirteen in 1904, and in 1907 it was moved farther south and renamed Midway School. A few houses were still shown in the 1940s, but by the 1980s only a cemetery marked the townsite.

What the plaque says

The Village of South Gabriel The South Gabriel Post Office opened in Postmaster Thomas Lewiston's mercantile store on Sept. 29, 1871. The village, named for the South San Gabriel River, was also called Lewiston. Located on the Austin-Burnet Road, the hamlet soon had two stores, a hotel, saloon, cotton gin, school, church, and wagon, saddle, blacksmith, and carpentry shops. The population in 1880 was 39. The Austin and Northwestern Railroad passed to the north of the settlement in 1882, and on Dec. 8, 1882, the post office moved to the new town of Bertram (2 miles N) and South Gabriel disappeared. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge: Doeskin Ranch — 7.0 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.
• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 18 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 Lake State Park — 19 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.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 20 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.

More markers nearby

• Bertram School — 2.1 mi
• Bertram — 2.3 mi
• Oatmeal Cemetery — 2.8 mi
• Site of Prairie Point Community — 3.6 mi