Hays County, Texas

Hays County, located in south central Texas, is on the border between the Edwards Plateau and southern Black Prairie regions surrounded by Travis County to the northeast, Caldwell County to the southeast, Guadalupe County to the south, Comal County to the southwest and Blanco County to the north. The center of the county is twenty-three miles southwest of Austin.

Cities, Towns & Communities

Bear Creek | Buda | Dripping Springs | Hays | Kyle | Mountain City | Niederwald | San Marcos – county seat | Uhland | Wimberley | Woodcreek

History

Hays County 1858. This is a western county ; the surface is diversified by hill, valley, rivulet, and brook. It is a good stock-raising and farming county, and has a genial climate ; here are some of the most valuable water privileges in the State of Texas ; coal, iron, salt, and other minerals and metals, are said to abound. The distance from the centre of the county to Port Lavacca is 135 miles. San Marcos is a town at the Springs of that name, and Stringtown is a settlement built along a beautiful valley at the foot of the mountain range these are both charming A recent writer says : ” There is not a more beautiful and romantic spot than the San Marcos country. 

On March 1, 1848, the state legislature formed Hays County from territory formerly part of Travis County. William W. Moon, Eli T. Merriman, and Mike Sessom, original settlers and members of John Coffee Hays’s company of Texas Rangers, worked with Gen. Edward Burleson, a member of the Texas Senate, to have the new county named for Hays. County organization and the designation of San Marcos as county seat gave impetus to settlement; the population grew from 387 in 1850 to 2,126 in 1860. The county shrank slightly on February 12, 1858, when it lost acreage to the new Blanco County and gained a portion of Comal County. On January 10, 1862, the legislature again transferred another small area to Blanco County. Boundaries remained stable for nearly a century, until resurvey of the Hays-Travis county line in 1955 added over 16,000 acres to Hays County. 

County Histories

A History of Central Texas, 1970, Mary Starr Barkley

A Brief History of Hays County and San Marcos, Texas, 1948 by Dudley Richard Dobie

Historical Markers in Hays County, 1977 by Tula Townsend Wyatt, Hays County Historical Commission

Location

San Marcos, TX 29° 52′ 59.79″ N, 97° 56′ 29.0184″ W

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