San Saba County
San Saba, San Saba County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Formed from Bexar County; created February 1, 1856; organized May 3, 1856. The river traversing the region, the mission erected near by in 1757, and later the county and county seat were given the name of an early saint, whose name in Spanish is Saba.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
San Saba County was carved from Bexar County and organized in 1856 in the Texas Hill Country. Its name reaches back nearly a century earlier, to a Spanish mission erected near the river in 1757 and ultimately to a saint whose name the river, county, and county seat all carry. The county sits in country where Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American ambitions overlapped.
Why it matters
The nested naming — saint to river to mission to county — traces how Spanish colonial place-names survived to shape the map of Anglo-American Texas long after the missions themselves failed.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cedar Log Cabin Museum
San Saba, TX
This cedar log structure served more than a century ago as stables on the Charles Harris ranch along Cherokee Creek south of San Saba, built sturdy enough to keep horses from being stolen in the raiding days of the Texas frontier. Preserved as the Cedar Log Cabin Museum, it was given in memory of Eula Gray Kuykendall by her husband and children. The building stands as a rare survivor of early ranch life in the county.
John H. "Shorty" Brown Cemetery
San Saba, TX
After time in Arkansas, John H. "Shorty" Brown brought his wife Jane Ann and children to the San Saba country, helping found the town in 1854 and becoming a civic leader. Though the county provided a public graveyard, the Browns set aside this plot near their home as a family burial ground, where Jane Ann—mother of 17 of Brown's 21 children—was likely the first laid to rest around 1874. Family members, including a son and son-in-law who were murdered, rest here with friends and kin.
San Saba County Jail
San Saba, TX
Erected in 1884 at a cost of $13,000 for the building and $300 for the lot, the San Saba County Jail is the county's oldest surviving public building. Built of blue limestone in an Italianate Texas style, it housed the jailer's family on the first floor. A twelve-foot board fence went up after an 1886 jailbreak and has since been removed.
San Saba County Courthouse
San Saba, TX
San Saba County was created by the Texas Legislature in 1856, and a frame courthouse and later a stone one served its people on this site through the nineteenth century. In 1910, with the city newly incorporated and a railroad connection on the way, residents authorized a grand replacement. Alabama architect Walter Chamberlain designed this Classical Revival building of pressed brick and rusticated sandstone, finished just as the first train arrived in August 1911.