Kerr County Album Page: 4 of 548
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KERR COUNTY ALBUM
INTRODUCTION
Professor Glen E. Lich
Schreiner College
Kerr County has always been my kind of Texas. Bigger than life, rambunctious and colorful, uncompromising about dignity and freedom, courageous if not
downright foolhardy. The way Texas likes to think of itself. A maverick grazing on the edge of three cultures. Cousin once removed of Houston and Dallas.
About as upstream as one can safely get. Still a kind of frontier. Young land with long history.
The kind of Texas one remembers. The kind of land one gets homesick for. Again and again. A place with character, where sometimes progress means hold-
ing one's own against time. Where people are not always in a hurry to follow. Where the past hangs just heavy enough.
A place no one would confuse with Virginia. Louisiana. New Mexico. Arizona. California. A place no one would confuse for that matter with Welfare, Com-
fort, Fredericksburg, Utopia, Bandera, Medina, Rocksprings, or Junction with all their fanciful names. A place apart. But not too apart.
How can a person like such a place? Why should one? Dry, hot, sunburnt most of the year regardless of which way the elections go, Kerr County is nonethe-
less not the sort of Texas that leaves a person much choice about liking it.
I had to go a third of the way around the world to learn that side of Kerr County. Sitting in what must have been the fourth balcony of the gilded Royal Theater
in Munich watching a glitzy musical about country life on the steppes, I suddenly realized I had traveled that far to come face to face with what I had left behind:
the warmth and connectedness of a life and a place and a people that had deep meaning. Where people watched with two eyes: one fixed on the past, the other
on the future. Where history was important. But not so important that it blinded people to present realities. Where the land was beautiful after a fashion, but
not so beautiful that people grew indolent or wasteful. Many are the times that, like the villagers of Anatevka, Kerr Countians could ask, "Wouldn't this be
a good time for the Messiah to return?" But a person had to act as the land taught him to act. Perseverance. Making do. Burning the thorns off the prickly
pears so that cattle could eat - maybe only two or three more days. Nostalgia had to be put on or taken off at will.
No heritage is simple. Nor is it of one color, creed, gender, party. Nor is it resoundingly good or overwhelmingly bad. Kerr County's history teaches the value
of the mixed crop, the importance individuals can make, the strength of community, the power of people to stretch and expand and hold on. The dominance
of ideas. The futility of going it alone. Roots may not run deep in shallow caliche, but they entwine and have all the more character.
Anyone can read in the Texas Almanac that Kerr County is situated in southwest central Texas where the Edwards Plateau gives way - somewhat dramati-
cally - to blacklands and plains that roll down to the Gulf of Mexico. That it was created in 1856 - somewhat by hook and crook - from Bexar County
and named for a member of Austin's colony. The county has 1,101 square miles, ranges in altitude from 1,400 up to 2,400 feet on the Divide, enjoys a suppos-
edly mild climate with temperatures from 34-94 degrees Fahrenheit, and luxuriates under an average annual rainfall of 29.75 inches. These are figures
endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce. "Ski Kerrville" bumper stickers and July watering bills may not support the published facts. Hills and spring-fed
streams compete with the Guadalupe River as scenic tourist attractions. Music festivals, art fairs, college, theater, camps, ranches, and wildlife put Kerr County
"on the map," so to speak. Three major hospitals attest to healthful climate and pellucid air that brought - and still bring - Europeans, artists, retirees, and
refugees from the city. A Cowboy Artists Museum is itself a work of art. But numerous old buildings have been demolished or neglected as the town of Kerrville,
too soon wealthy, grew impatiently as wool and mohair agribusiness gave way to tourism and manufacturing. Income in the relatively sparsely populated coun-
ty edges toward $400 million. Manufacturing value - aircraft, boats, jewelry - approached $25 million in the year of the Texas sesquicentennial. Always
about equally divided between males and females, county population figures show steady growth from 634 in 1860 to 2,168 in 1880, 4,980 in 1900, 5,842
in 1920, 11,650 in 1940, 16,800 in 1960, and 28,780 in 1980. Kerrville itself recorded a population of 156 in 1880 (a considerable drop from the decade
before) and 15,276 a century later. Like the temperature and rainfall figures, which are too good to be true, the reported size of the county seat seems intention-
ally to be kept small. Perhaps to attract newcomers, tourists. At any rate, Kerrville acts like a town of 25,000 at least. My theory is that they don't count mem-
bers of the minority party. Population of the county as a whole hovers around 30,000 most of the year, but quickly soars during the various high seasons -
art and music or hunting. For the most part the population, as ethnically diverse as that of the state, clusters in Kerrville, Ingram, Center Point, and Hunt. But
Cypress Creek, Camp Verde, Turtle Creek, Mountain Home, and Divide add acres.
For those who want a chronological narrative, the county has fine histories. These will allude to Indian life sites that give evidence of human habitation in
the county for ten thousand years. They will explain how, from an early settlement of shingle makers, a small town grew in the early 1850s, its significance
enhanced by the start of a mill, store, bank, and freighting network.
Kerrville rapidly acquired pre-eminence over older, neighboring towns like Comfort and Fredericksburg - perhaps because three or four people in Kerrville
took bigger risks or perhaps because the mill was more carefully engineered or perhaps because of an abundance of lumber or maybe solely by chance -
and eventually Kerrville came to be the next important town west of San Antonio and Austin and the last big town before San Angelo, which everyone the
considered the end of the world. A couple of enterprising Kerrville citizens recognized that power was not only economic but also political, and thus emboldened
they stole the county records from Comfort and then expelled the irate Comforters into newly formed Kendall County. As county seat, Kerrville drew a rail
connection, built clinics and sanatoriums, established wool and mohair pools, attracted a small contingent of British colonists who brought innovations to Hll
Country ranching, and changed from a German and Anglo-American town into a town where only English and some Spanish were spoken. After dabbling with
camels at Camp Verde and splitting about equally during the Civil War, the town and the county confined further military prowess to producing an admiral,
a general, numerous other veterans, and a steady stream of students at West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy. Women saved this frontier from
backsliding. Rosalie Dietert did at least as much as her husband to make the new town root on the bluffs over the Guadalupe. And Jose Policarpio Rodriquez
- scout, guide, and frontier soldier - ranks as high as the most illustrious Texas Rangers, of which the county also produced a fair crop.
But this is a personal book - a story of people and families stitched together by many authors and then carefully quilted by members of the Kerr County
Historical Commission who wanted, not to replace, but to add to Kerr County's story. The Kerr County Album brings us a step closer to the kind of history
we ought to be thinking. A history that asks why and how as often as what. A history that remembers who does not always mean heroes. A history that values
the complex ethnic, religious, social, commercial, and agricultural heritage of this part of the Hill County. And knowing those things, is called to action.
For character, so deeply engraved on landscape and faces, is less of words than of deeds. And these deeds show Kerr County at its finest: not just gratifying
the needs of the moment, not just talking about civic virtues, not particularly unique in the sense that the word is often carelessly used, but able instead to
expand and to renew and to create -- to be old and growing ever younger.4
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Kerr County Historical Commission. Kerr County Album, book, 1986~; Kerrville, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth795373/m1/4/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Kerr County Historical Commission.