Old Rock Store

Utopia, TX

After an 1886 Indian raid on their nearby home, the Kincheloe family relocated here, built a home and a two-story rock store, and platted a town they first called "Montana," donating land for churches, a school, and a square. Congregations gathered even before the town was formally founded, and a postmaster later rechristened it "Utopia" in praise of the climate. The frontier settlement grew into a center for ranching and, in time, retirement and recreation in the Hill Country.

Utopia, TX

Established in 1866 as part of the Uvalde-Kerrville Mission, this congregation held its earliest gatherings as pioneer camp meetings under brush arbors in a pecan grove, the first led in 1868 by the Rev. A. J. Potter, a noted former Civil War chaplain and circuit rider. Members did much of the work themselves in building the Gothic sanctuary in the early 1890s on land donated by local settlers.

Utopia, TX

Founded in 1852 by San Jacinto veteran Capt. William Ware, Waresville was the first nonmilitary settlement in Uvalde County, a cluster of log and native-stone homes tucked into Sabinal Canyon. Life on this frontier was perilous: settlers were lost to Indian raids between 1856 and 1866, and Ware himself was buried in the colony cemetery in 1853. Though the post office moved on to nearby Utopia in 1883, the cemetery, early homes, and the site of the first store still mark where the canyon was first settled.

Utopia, TX

Born in 1800, William Ware brought his family to Montgomery County, Texas, in 1828 and threw himself into the fight for Texas independence, raising a military company that fought at the Siege of Bexar in 1835 and leading volunteers at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Years later he pushed west into Sabinal Canyon, arriving in 1852 to build a cabin that became the seed of the settlement of Waresville. He died the next year and was buried in the cemetery there.