Brewster County
Alpine, Brewster County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Brewster County formed from Presidio County. Created February 2, 1887. In 1897 the territory of Buchel and Foley counties was added to Brewster. Named for Henry Percy Brewster 1816-1884 soldier and statesman, a hero of San Jacinto. Murphyville county seat, 1887, name changed to Alpine, 1889. Largest county in area in the state.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Carved from Presidio County and created in 1887, Brewster County grew in 1897 when the territory of the short-lived Buchel and Foley counties was added, making it the largest county by area in Texas. It was named for Henry Percy Brewster, a soldier and statesman remembered as a hero of San Jacinto. Its seat, first called Murphyville in 1887, was renamed Alpine in 1889.
Why it matters
The county's sprawling creation in the Big Bend reflects the westward organization of far West Texas, where vast, sparsely settled lands were mapped into the largest county in the state.
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Related people
- · Henry Percy Brewster
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Burgess' Water Hole
Alpine, TX
This desert spring carried a layered history: named San Lorenzo by the Spanish explorer Juan Dominguez de Mendoza in 1684, later called Charco Alzate for an Apache chieftain, and finally honoring pioneer freighter John W. Burgess, who reportedly outwitted Apache raiders here. Along its banks ran the emigrant road to California by way of Chihuahua. In the arid Big Bend country, reliable water dictated where travelers, traders, and armies could go.
Nolte-Rooney House
Alpine, TX
Early settler F. H. Nolte built this house in 1890 in Murphyville, now northwest Alpine, using 20-inch adobe walls made from bricks molded right at the site. He sold it in 1893 to John Rooney, the county's second sheriff, and its exterior still looks much as it did when new.
Gage-Van Sickle House
Alpine, TX
Raised in 1866 in what would become Alpine, this house is one of the oldest survivors in the vast, sparsely settled Big Bend country of far West Texas. It passed through a series of early owners—among them the Gage and Van Sickle families whose names it now carries—men who staked their futures on this remote and rugged frontier.
First Methodist Church
Alpine, TX
A circuit-riding preacher organized this Methodist congregation in the far West Texas town of Alpine in 1884, and by 1889 residents had raised an adobe church whose altar section still survives. In the sparsely settled Big Bend country, the building served not only Methodists but Baptists and Presbyterians alike, a shared house of worship on a thin frontier.