Kerrville Daily Times
Kerrville, Kerr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Several newspapers have served the residents of Kerr County since its organization. Most of these have ceased to publish but one, the Kerrville Daily Times, has served area readers as the only daily newspaper published in the Hill Country. One of the oldest businesses in continuous operation in the county, the paper began as the Center Point News in 1910. James J. Starkey, son of Kerr County pioneers J.M. and Martha Starkey, led a group of investors who moved the Center Point News to Kerrville in 1925. Starkey originally renamed his publication The Latest, but changed the name in January 1926 to the Hill View Times, writing that “a person standing on a hill top and viewing the times of the day can get a clear and accurate perspective of events.” In October 1926, Starkey once again changed the name of his weekly newspaper to The Kerrville Times. He also served in community affairs, including as chairman of the Democratic Party in Kerr County. James sold the assets of The Times publishing company to his nephew, G. Rankin Starkey, in 1934, and continued to write a weekly column, “Pioneer History,” until his death twenty years later. G. Rankin Starkey and co-publisher Sam P. Braswell converted the weekly paper to a daily run in March 1949 with the debut of the Kerrville Daily Times. William E. Dozier, who added a weekend edition to The Times in 1976, was elected president of the Texas Press Association in 1979. The Times later produced an electronic edition and purchased the assets of the kerrville mountain sun, continuing to publish that historic newspaper. A Texas company, Southern Newspapers Inc., purchased The Times in 1995. The Times and its employees have a long history of service to the community and the newspaper industry.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Kerrville Daily Times traces its lineage to the Center Point News, founded in 1910 and moved to Kerrville in 1925 by James J. Starkey, son of Kerr County pioneers. Starkey renamed it more than once—settling on The Kerrville Times—while writing a "Pioneer History" column until his death. His nephew G. Rankin Starkey and co-publisher Sam Braswell converted it to a daily in 1949, and over the decades it absorbed rival papers to become the Hill Country's only daily. It remains one of the oldest continuously operating businesses in the county.
Why it matters
For more than a century this newspaper has been the Hill Country's paper of record, a reminder of the central role the local press played in binding small American communities together and preserving their history.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years just before and after 1910, the Texas Hill Country was still a young, thinly settled place, and its scattered towns lived and died by two things: the railroad and the local newspaper. Kerr County had been organized only a few decades earlier, and communities like Center Point and Kerrville were knit together not by highways but by the printed page that told a family who was born, who married, who had come to town, and what the weather and the markets were doing.
A county newspaper in that era was equal parts bulletin board, civic conscience, and historical record. Editors set type by hand, printed on presses that demanded muscle as much as skill, and often knew every subscriber by name. Many such papers flickered to life on hope and folded within a year or two, which is exactly why the marker notes how many Kerr County titles have "ceased to publish."
Against that backdrop, a paper that survived — that kept coming out week after week and eventually day after day — became something rare: an institution. To trace one continuous thread from a 1910 startup to a modern daily is to trace the survival of the town's own memory.
People & events
The story begins with the Center Point News in 1910 and turns on the Starkey family, who were themselves rooted in the county's pioneer past. James J. Starkey, son of Kerr County pioneers J.M. and Martha Starkey, led a group of investors who moved the little paper to Kerrville in 1925 — a decision that shifted the region's press to its growing seat of trade.
Starkey seems to have been a man who thought hard about what a newspaper was for. He first called it The Latest, then in January 1926 renamed it the Hill View Times, explaining that a person on a hilltop "viewing the times of the day can get a clear and accurate perspective of events." By that October he had settled on The Kerrville Times. He was more than a publisher, too, serving in community affairs including as chairman of the county Democratic Party.
The torch passed within the family and the trade. James sold the company to his nephew, G. Rankin Starkey, in 1934, yet kept writing a weekly column, "Pioneer History," until his death twenty years later — a fitting act for a man descended from settlers. In March 1949, G. Rankin Starkey and co-publisher Sam P. Braswell made the leap that named the paper for good, converting the weekly into the Kerrville Daily Times. Decades on, William E. Dozier added a weekend edition in 1976 and was elected president of the Texas Press Association in 1979, and the paper absorbed the historic Kerrville Mountain Sun before Southern Newspapers Inc. purchased it in 1995.
Its place in the American story
The arc of this one Hill Country paper is the arc of the American local press. Across the country, thousands of small-town weeklies were founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of them fragile, many of them gone within a few years. The ones that endured did so by becoming genuinely indispensable — the single place a community went to see itself reflected back.
The move from weekly to daily in 1949 mirrors a national maturing of local journalism in the postwar years, when growing towns could support — and demanded — news every day rather than once a week. And the pattern of a surviving paper buying up its former rivals, then adding electronic editions and eventually being folded into a larger newspaper company, is the story of the whole industry in miniature.
In an age when local newspapers are vanishing across America, a title with an unbroken line back to 1910 is a reminder of how much civic knowledge a community keeps — or loses — with its paper. The record of a town's births, deaths, arguments, and triumphs lives in those bound volumes as nowhere else.
If you visit
Stand in Kerrville and remember that you're in the town this paper chose in 1925, when its investors decided the county's growing seat deserved its press. The marker rewards a slow read: it packs a full century of name changes and family handoffs into a few paragraphs, and each one marks a real decision by real people trying to keep a business — and a community's voice — alive.
Let the detail about James Starkey's "Pioneer History" column sit with you. Here was a man from a pioneer family, writing down the county's early days for his neighbors, week after week, until he died. If you have time, a local library or historical collection is often where the old bound volumes of a paper like this live, and turning those brittle pages is the closest thing to time travel a small town offers.
It makes a natural stop on any Hill Country drive built around how ordinary places endure. A newspaper office isn't a battlefield or a mansion, but it's where a town wrote its own history in real time — and that's worth pausing for.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · James J. Starkey
- · G. Rankin Starkey
- · William E. Dozier
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