Kimble County
Junction, Kimble County, Texas
Marker Inscription
JUMANO AND APACHE INDIANS INHABITED REGION WHEN SPANISH EXPLORERS TRAVELED ACROSS IT IN THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES, AND WERE DISPLACED BY THE COMANCHE TRIBE BY THE MID-19TH CENTURY. AREA WAS UNDER MILITARY JURISDICTION OF FORTS TERRETT (1852-54) AND McKAVETT (1852-59,1868-83), WHICH WERE AIDED IN DEFENSE BY THE TEXAS RANGERS. COUNTY WAS CREATED FROM BEXAR COUNTY, 1858, NAMED FOR GEORGE C. KIMBLE (1810?-1836), WHO DIED DEFENDING THE ALAMO. ORGANIZED IN 1876, WITH THE COUNTY SEAT FIRST AT KIMBLEVILLE, THEN JUNCTION IN 1877. HAVEN FOR LAWLESS ELEMENT UNTIL THE RANGERS RESTORED PEACE IN 1880s. RANCHING IS PRIMARY INDUSTRY, PRODUCING WOOL AND MOHAIR. ERECTED BY THE STATE OF TEXAS - 1973
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This hill country along the Llano was home to Jumano and Apache peoples when Spanish explorers passed through in the 1600s and 1700s, before the Comanche came to dominate the region by the mid-1800s. Frontier forts and the Texas Rangers guarded the area as Anglo settlement pushed westward, and the county was organized in 1876, named for an Alamo defender. Long troubled by outlaws until the Rangers restored order in the 1880s, it settled into a livelihood of sheep and goat ranching for wool and mohair.
Why it matters
Kimble County distills the contested frontier story of West Texas — Indigenous homelands, Spanish exploration, military outposts, and the slow arrival of law and ranching that shaped the region.
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Related people
- · George C. Kimble
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Bear Creek Texas Ranger Camp
Junction, TX
Established in October 1877, the Old Bear Creek camp served as a patrol base for Company E of the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion, watching the Llano River country for Indians and outlaws. The region was a haven for cattle and horse thieves, but within weeks Lieutenant N. O. Reynolds and his thirty men had captured many; in 1878 they helped repel one of the area's last Indian raids. Their presence, maintained into the mid-1880s, opened Kimble and nearby counties to peaceful settlement.
Sentry Building
Menard, TX
Built in 1852 by soldiers of the 8th Infantry, this cypress-and-limestone structure served as an officer-of-the-day station and sentry post along the road toward Fort Concho. It was part of the network of frontier posts—anchored here by nearby Fort McKavett—that the U.S. Army maintained to shield settlers pressing into the Texas Hill Country. The building is a rare survivor of the everyday military architecture that guarded the mid-19th-century frontier.
Mason County
Mason vicinity, TX
Created and organized in 1858, Mason County took its name from Fort Mason, the frontier post garrisoned on and off from 1851 to 1869. The fort honored Lt. G. T. Mason of the U.S. 2nd Dragoons, killed near Brownsville in 1846. It was one link in a chain of Army posts spaced a day's ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande, built to shield settlers from Apache and Comanche raids.
Vicinity of Bradbury Settlement
Junction, TX
Where the North and South Llano rivers meet, frontiersman James Bradbury, Sr. built one of Kimble County's earliest settlements, arriving with six children after his wife's death. His cluster of picket and log buildings included a blacksmith shop for mending guns and tools, and families lived off ranching supplemented by fish, game, honey, and even cured bear meat. Bradbury was killed in an Indian fight in 1872, and by 1875 his land had passed to Dr. E. K. Kountz.