Nolte-Rooney House
Alpine, Brewster County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1890 by F.H. Nolte, early settler, on land in Murphyville (NW Alpine). The 20 inch walls are made of adobe bricks molded at the building site. Home was sold 1893 to John Rooney, second county Sheriff. The exterior looks as it did in 1890. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark --1968
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The sturdy adobe home reflects the building traditions and early civic life of far West Texas as the Big Bend country was first being settled.
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Related people
- · F. H. Nolte
- · John Rooney
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
J. C. Bird
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Julius Canselor Bird came to West Texas at eighteen as a Texas Ranger, guarding crews building the transcontinental railroad, then homesteaded ten sections along Calamity and Ash Creeks south of Alpine. With his wife America Walker he raised Durham cattle, helped found and finance the First Baptist Church, and later opened Alpine's first Buick dealership — a life that spanned the region's leap from frontier to automobile age.
Gage-Van Sickle House
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First Baptist Church of Alpine
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When the railroad reached this spot in 1882, a spring-fed settlement sprang up that would soon be called Alpine. Missionaries followed the settlers, and in 1893 the First Baptist Church of Alpine was formally organized, worshipping in an adobe sanctuary by 1896. As the congregation grew alongside the town and its new teachers' college, it filled community gaps — running a borrowing library where there was no public one and supporting scouting, youth, and mission work.