Mosty Brothers Nursery
Center Point, Kerr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
MOSTY BROTHERS NURSERY A son of Belgian immigrants, Leander A. Mosty worked as a cattle driver and broker in Kansas before migrating to Kerr County in 1897. Sensing a market for fruit and pecan trees in the sparsely treed area, Mosty and his wife, Elizabeth (Bean), a Lampasas native, moved their family to a tract along the Guadalupe River, where the Kerrville orchards and nursery, later known as Mosty Brothers Nursery, began in 1898. After being certified by the state of Texas in 1907, the nursery expanded to center point the next year. Along with several ornamental shrubs, Mosty developed new varieties of cling peach, freestone peach, and pecan trees, all of which bear the Mosty name. After his death in 1917, Mosty’s sons Lee and Harvey turned the business into one of the largest wholesale nurseries in the southwest with one of the region’s largest greenhouses. In 1927, Lee Mosty built his family an eight-room house in the center point property’s pecan orchard. In the 1930s, Lee and Harvey helped organize the Texas association of nurserymen. They also provided native plants to landscape the Texas centennial central exposition grounds, now the Texas State Fair Grounds, in Dallas. After Lee’s death in 1964, his sons Robert Lee, Raymond, and C.H. (Scott) continued to develop their business and support the Texas horticulture industry. The Kerrville nursery closed in 1985, but Mosty family descendants, now in the fifth generation, continue to operate the center point location. One of the community’s iconic businesses since 1908, the nursery continues to contribute to the economy and culture of center point. (2014)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The son of Belgian immigrants, Leander A. Mosty came to sparsely treed Kerr County in the 1890s and bet that Hill Country settlers would want fruit and pecan trees. From an 1898 orchard along the Guadalupe River his family built one of the Southwest's largest wholesale nurseries, breeding cling and freestone peaches and pecans that still bear the Mosty name. His sons helped organize the Texas nurserymen's association and supplied plants for the 1936 Texas Centennial grounds in Dallas.
Why it matters
It captures how immigrant families quietly shaped Texas agriculture and landscape, turning a treeless frontier county into a lasting horticultural enterprise now in its fifth generation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, the Texas Hill Country was still a raw, wide-open landscape. Kerr County sat on the edge of the western frontier, its rolling limestone hills and clear rivers drawing ranchers and farmers but offering little in the way of shade or orchards. The land was, as the marker plainly puts it, sparsely treed — good for grazing cattle and raising sheep and goats, but a hard place to find a peach or a pecan that hadn't been hauled in from somewhere else.
This was the era of the Gilded Age giving way to the Progressive Era, a time when the American West was being knit together by railroads, cattle drives, and the ambitions of families willing to bet everything on a new place. Kansas cattle towns were booming as the great herds moved north, and men who worked those trails often carried their earnings toward the next opportunity.
Into that setting came the idea that would define this spot along the Guadalupe River: that a treeless county was not a limitation but a market waiting to be filled. Someone simply had to grow the trees the settlers wanted.
People & events
Leander A. Mosty was the son of Belgian immigrants, and his early working life carried him through the cattle economy of Kansas, where he made his living as a driver and a broker. But it was in 1897 that he turned toward Kerr County, and the following year, in 1898, that he and his wife Elizabeth — a Lampasas native whose maiden name was Bean — settled their family on a tract along the Guadalupe River and planted the beginnings of what would become the Mosty Brothers Nursery.
Mosty had an eye for what the land lacked and what people would pay for. He raised fruit and pecan trees where few grew wild, and he did more than sell stock — he bred it. The nursery developed new varieties of cling peach, freestone peach, and pecan, each carrying the Mosty name. The operation earned state certification in 1907 and expanded to Center Point the very next year.
When Leander died in 1917, the enterprise passed to his sons Lee and Harvey, who grew it into one of the largest wholesale nurseries in the Southwest, complete with one of the region's biggest greenhouses. In 1927 Lee built an eight-room house in the property's pecan orchard. The brothers helped organize the Texas association of nurserymen and supplied native plants to landscape the grounds of the 1936 Texas Centennial exposition in Dallas. After Lee's death in 1964, his sons carried the work forward, and though the Kerrville nursery closed in 1985, the family — now into a fifth generation — still runs the Center Point location.
Its place in the American story
The Mosty story is a distinctly American one, and it belongs to a chapter often overlooked: the quiet work of immigrant families who reshaped the country's landscape one tree at a time. The son of Belgian immigrants took skills learned in the cattle trade and applied them to horticulture, turning a frontier weakness — the absence of orchards — into a durable business.
Across the nation in this era, agriculture was becoming more scientific and more organized. The breeding of new fruit and nut varieties, the certification of nursery stock by state authorities, and the formation of professional trade associations all reflected a maturing American farm economy that was moving from subsistence toward specialized enterprise. A Hill Country nursery breeding its own named peaches was part of that larger transformation.
And there is a poetic resonance in the family's contribution to the 1936 Texas Centennial: plants grown in a once-treeless county were sent to help green the grounds where Texas celebrated a hundred years of its own history. A family business became, in a small but real way, part of the state's civic memory.
If you visit
You are in the heart of the Texas Hill Country here, along the Guadalupe River where the land still rolls in limestone ridges and the light falls soft through whatever trees have taken root. Center Point is a small community, the kind of place where a single family business can be woven into the town's identity for well over a century — and this one has been, since 1908.
As you stand near the marker, think about the contrast the Mostys saw: a county so short on trees that growing them became a livelihood. The pecan orchard and the long history of cultivated fruit and nut varieties are the living legacy here, a reminder that some of the most lasting frontier ventures were rooted quite literally in the soil.
This is a fine stop on a slower Hill Country drive, the sort of place that rewards curiosity about how ordinary landscapes were made. Give yourself a moment to appreciate that a business begun by the children of immigrants is still tended by the fifth generation of the same family — a rare kind of continuity you can feel in a place that has never stopped working.
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
- · Leander A. Mosty
- · Elizabeth Bean Mosty
Themes & tags
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