Beitel Lumberyard
Kerrville, Kerr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
When the SA&AP Railroad made Kerrville the last stop on their line, Frank J. Beitel, owner of several lumberyards in San Antonio, bought land in Kerrville in 1889 to open a lumberyard. With Kerr County’s variety of trees and community growth, the lumberyard flourished. In the early 20th century, the lumberyard consisted of a warehouse, office, a retail building and large lumber shed. The original train depot burned in 1913. Beitel sold a portion of his land along the line for a new depot and received a spur of tracks onto his property to load and offload goods which greatly increased efficiency and his business. For over a century, the lumberyard played a critical role in the growth and development of Kerrville. (2017)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad made Kerrville its last stop, San Antonio lumberman Frank J. Beitel bought land here in 1889 to open a lumberyard, betting on the county's timber and coming growth. The business thrived, expanding into a warehouse, retail building, and lumber shed, and gained its own rail spur for loading goods after the town's depot was rebuilt in the 1910s. For more than a century the yard supplied the materials that built Kerrville.
Why it matters
It shows how the arrival of a railroad turned a remote Hill Country town into a supply hub, with businesses like the lumberyard fueling a building boom that shaped the region.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Frank J. Beitel
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
J. M. Koch's Hotel
D'Hanis, TX
When the railroad carried the town of D'Hanis to its new site, hospitality followed. J. M. and Mary Ann Koch, hotel keepers here since 1898, built this brick lodging in 1906 from bricks fired at the local D'Hanis plant—reportedly laid up by Chinese railroad laborers. It served travelers until 1920, then became a feed store for the Farmers Exchange and later a boarding house, its two-story porch, paired round-arched windows, and corbelled parapet marking it as an elegant small-town hotel of its day.
Roy and Madge Hearne House
San Antonio, TX
When the railroad reached San Antonio in 1877, new neighborhoods rose on the high ground near San Pedro Springs. Here, cotton broker Roy Hearne and his wife Madge — a granddaughter of Sam Houston — built a home in the 1910s, hiring architect Atlee B. Ayres and contractor Eugene Davis. Its eclectic blend of prairie, craftsman, mission, and neoclassical styles, from granite and green tile roof to original mosaic floors, reflects the confident taste of the railroad-era city.
Acequia de Arriba
San Antonio, TX
An acequia is a communal gravity-fed irrigation ditch, a system Spanish colonists brought to Texas and the greater Southwest and adapted from centuries of Iberian and North African practice. San Antonio's Spanish missions, founded in the early 1700s, depended on a network of these ditches — the acequias madre and their branches — to water fields and sustain settlement in the semi-arid landscape. The "acequia de arriba," or upper ditch, was one strand of that lifeline, and the community associations that governed water-sharing were among the region's earliest civic institutions.
San Antonio & Aransas Pass Passenger Train Depot
Kerrville, TX
In 1887 Kerrville became the western terminus of the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad, and a depot rose to handle the surge of travelers and trade the line brought. After the original wooden station burned in 1913, lumberman Frank J. Beitel sold the railroad land for a new brick depot, completed in 1915 with arched doorways, twin waiting rooms, and wood-burning stoves. When passenger service ended in 1970 the building found new life as a restaurant and shops, its wavy original glass still in place.