Turtle Creek School and Cemetery

Turtle Creek rises five miles north of the Bandera County line and runs east 24.5 miles to the Guadalupe six miles southeast of Kerrville, crossing shallow, stony soils with live oak, Ashe juniper and mesquite. In 1859 the army put Camp Ives on the creek, four miles north of Camp Verde, after settlers asked for protection. It saw little use: its troopers left in March 1860 to escort Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee to the Rio Grande, returned that October against Juan Cortina's renewed threat, and abandoned the post for good in January 1861.

What the plaque says

Turtle Creek School and Cemetery This schoolhouse and nearby burial ground originally served the pioneer settlers of the Turtle Creek area. The oldest marked grave is that of Miles L. Denton (1856-75). Also buried in the cemetery is Susan Elizabeth Bird (1866-87), the wife of J. Fisher Bird who patented the survey. Continuously used as a voting place since 1885, this property was obtained by school trustees in 1892 through a land trade with James Spicer. Classes were held here until 1958. Area residents bought the site in 1977 for the benefit of the community. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 6.9 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Treue der Union Monument — 18 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Frontier Times Museum — 19 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.
• Lost Maples State Natural Area — 24 mi
  A canyon of the upper Sabinal where a relict stand of bigtooth maples turns color each autumn, a sight that drew crowds up a gravel road long before there was a park.

More markers nearby

• Gus F. Schreiner Home — 6.2 mi
• Gatlin Site — 6.4 mi
• Mary Ann Kent Byas Chambers Morriss — 6.6 mi
• Schreiner College (Schreiner Institute) — 6.7 mi