Site of Mormon Settlement
Marble Falls, Burnet County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of a settlement made in 1851 by 20 Mormon families under the leadership of Lyman Wight (1796-1858). Here they built homes, lumber mills, and shops for the manufacture of furniture. Abandoned in 1853. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1851 some twenty Mormon families led by Lyman Wight settled here on the Texas frontier, building homes, lumber mills, and furniture shops. Wight, a former lieutenant of Joseph Smith who broke with Brigham Young's church, led his followers through a series of short-lived Texas colonies, and this one lasted only until 1853. The state marked the vanished settlement in 1936.
Why it matters
The site is a tangible trace of the fractured Mormon migrations of the 1840s and 1850s, reminding us that the Latter-day Saint story ran through Texas as well as Utah.
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Related people
- Β· Lyman Wight
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Christian-Matern House
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When Marble Falls was founded in the 1880s, Juliet Johnson β daughter of the town's founder β married George Christian, one of the ten men whose Texas Mining & Improvement Company platted and promoted the new town. This fine Queen Anne house was built for the couple in 1892, all decorative woodwork and protruding bay windows. In 1908 it passed to merchant and rancher Ivo Matern, later mayor of Marble Falls, whose family kept it for fifty-one years.
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