Runnels County Courthouse
Ballinger, Runnels County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Constructed here, 1888-89, after hotly contested battle with Runnels City for county seat. (County had been organized 1880.) Structure stands on one of largest courthouse squares in Texas -- 2 city blocks. Plot set aside prior to town lot sale by Santa Fe Railroad, June 29, 1886. In 1941, extensive remodeling modernized building. Two wings were added and old quarry (south of town on Colorado River) was opened to provide matching stone. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After Runnels County organized in 1880, its residents fought a heated contest with Runnels City before Ballinger—on land the Santa Fe Railroad had platted in 1886—won the county seat, and the courthouse rose here in 1888-89. It stands on one of the largest courthouse squares in Texas, a full two city blocks. A 1941 remodeling added two wings faced with stone from the same local quarry reopened along the Colorado River.
Why it matters
County-seat rivalries and railroad land deals decided the fate of countless West Texas towns, and this courthouse square embodies how a rail line's choice of route could crown one community over another.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Runnels County
Ballinger, TX
Carved from Bexar and Travis counties, Runnels County was created in 1858 and formally organized in 1880. It honors Hiram G. Runnels, a lawyer, Mississippi governor, and later Texas legislator. Its first county seat was Runnels City, but that role passed to Ballinger in 1888.
Charles H. Noyes
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When 21-year-old Charles H. Noyes was killed in 1919 by a fall from his horse while working cattle on his family's ranch, his grieving parents commissioned a monument not only to their son but to all Texas cowboys. Sculptor Pompeo Coppini studied horses for two years before creating the bronze, producing a work that memorializes the vanishing world of the open-range cowhand.
St. Mary, Star of the Sea, Catholic Church
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Catholic worship reached the west Texas town of Ballinger through traveling missionaries who used a church built in 1895. In 1910 this Gothic Revival sanctuary was completed under the Rev. J. B. Frigon, built of native rock quarried nearby by local craftsmen. Its single square tower and three-part facade have made it a landmark of the Runnels County plains.
Site of Pickettville
Ballinger, TX
Founded in 1862, Pickettville was the first civilian settlement in Runnels County, named for the picket houses and corrals its frontier families built. Ranching households — the Guests, the Wylie brothers and their hands, the Gordons, and the Coffeys — banded together for protection amid the Indian raids that intensified during the Civil War. In 1866 they drove their cattle off to open range, and their old picket corrals later held the herds of trail drivers passing through.