Site of Sidney J. Pyland Blacksmith Shop
Wimberley, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
While still a young boy, Sidney J. Pyland accompanied his parents on their journey from Tennessee to Wimberley about 1880. In 1895, at the age of 20, Sidney opened a blacksmith shop here, just above Cypress Creek on the busy village Square. He married Nellie Ann Wimberley in 1897. For 15 years Sidney forged horseshoes, built and repair wagons, and hammered out implements for area ranchers and farmers. In 1910 he moved his family and blacksmith shop intact to San Marcos. This site has continued to be a hub of business activity on Wimberley's Town Square. Incise: Sponsored by John and Mavis Woolsey
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Sidney J. Pyland came to Wimberley from Tennessee as a boy around 1880 and, at age twenty in 1895, opened a blacksmith shop just above Cypress Creek on the village square. For fifteen years he shod horses, built and mended wagons, and forged implements for the ranchers and farmers of the Hill Country, before moving his whole operation to San Marcos in 1910. The square where he worked has stayed a hub of business ever since.
Why it matters
The village smithy was the indispensable workshop of rural America, keeping the wagons rolling and the farms working before mechanization arrived.
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Related people
- · Sidney J. Pyland
- · Nellie Ann Wimberley Pyland
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Wimberley builder James Calvin Lane raised this modest craftsman home in 1935, next door to the café his wife Rebecca ran in the Texas Hill Country. From its living room, Rebecca operated Wimberley's first telephone switchboard, tying a small community together in the early days of rural phone service. The house is prized locally for its rare "giraffe rock" exterior, native stone studded with petrified wood and fossils.
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Around 1877, Zach Wimberley began building this board-and-batten house—painted a striking pink with red trim—for his wife Mary Elizabeth, using lumber from the family mill on Cypress Creek. That mill, run by Zach and his father Pleasant, ground flour, cornmeal, and sorghum molasses and was the beating heart of the village that still bears the family name. Stonemason Nathan Hughes, who married into the family, later added the distinctive petrified-wood terracing that ornaments the home.
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In 1848 San Jacinto veteran William C. Winters settled this Hill Country valley and raised grist and saw mills on Cypress Creek, drawing a settlement out of the wilderness. Passing through the hands of his son-in-law and then Pleasant Wimberley, who bought the complex in 1874, the mills ground flour, sawed lumber, cut shingles, and ginned cotton—renaming the growing village when the post office opened in 1880. After converting to steam power as the creek weakened, the enterprise finally closed in 1934, ending more than 85 years of work on the water.
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William Carvin Winters came to Texas from Tennessee in 1834 and fought — and was badly wounded — at the Battle of San Jacinto. Settling on Cypress Creek in the 1850s, he built a mill in 1856 and this thick-walled limestone homestead soon after, from which he could watch his saw- and gristmill turn. As the mill passed to the Cude and then the Wimberley families, the village around it was renamed with each owner, until 'Wimberley' finally stuck.