Wimberley Mills

Pleasant Wimberley, who bought the mill in 1874, was born in Wake County, North Carolina, in 1823 and reached Brenham on Christmas Day, 1847, after a few years in Mississippi and Arkansas. In 1855 his family drove a longhorn herd to a ranch on Walnut Creek on the Blanco-Llano county line, where for eighteen years they raised cattle and stage horses; his Percheron stallion bred with native horses gave stock in great demand. He served in the militia and a frontier district during the Civil War. He is buried in Wimberley Cemetery.

What the plaque says

Wimberley Mills In 1848 William C. Winters (1809-64), a veteran of San Jacinto, came to this valley and built a grist mill and sawmill on Cypress Creek. A settlement called Winters' Mill soon emerged from the wilderness. After a flood destroyed the millhouse about 1856, winters moved to higher ground across the creek and built a new 2-story millhouse with a long millrace and tailrace. after Winters' death in 1864, his son-in-law John M. Cude operated the mill successfully and the village came to be called Cude's Mill. Pleasant Wimberley (1823-1919) in 1874 bought the mill complex which included a stone flour mill, French buhrstone grist mill, sawmill, shingle mill, and a one-stand cotton gin, powered by a 21-inch turbine type waterwheel. The "Wimberley Mills" Post Office, opened in 1880, soon was renamed "Wimberley." A short supply of cypress wood in the early 1880s caused the shingle mill to close. In 1893 the flour mill shut down. Because of the diminishing flow of Cypress Creek, the operation was converted to steam power in 1900 and the millhouse was rebuilt in order to continue in operation. The milling enterprise was abandoned in 1934, after over 85 years of service on Cypress Creek. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 12 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 — 18 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 — 21 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.
• Pedernales Falls State Park — 23 mi
  The Pedernales stepping down over layered limestone east of Johnson City, a river that can turn from a placid stream to a torrent in minutes.

More markers nearby

• John Henry Saunders Homestead — steps away
• The Century-Old Wimberley Cemetery — 0.5 mi
• Driftwood Cemetery — 9.6 mi
• Agricultural Society of Fischer — 9.8 mi