Site of Town of Strickling
Bertram, Burnet County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Once a busy rural community. Named for Mrs. Martha (Webster) Strickling, who settled here in 1853 with husband Marmaduke. As child, she survived killing of some 30 settlers in infamous Webster Massacre near Leander, and months of Indian captivity. Post office opened here, 1857, and Strickling became a mail terminal and stage stop. Tons of lumber and buffalo hides were hauled through here. The town had a school, churches, a doctor's office, and stores. Strickling gradually declined when bypassed by the railroad, 1882. Only the cemetery remains. (1970)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Strickling grew up in the 1850s as a rural crossroads on the Central Texas frontier, named for Martha Webster Strickling, who settled here in 1853. As a child she had survived the infamous Webster Massacre near Leander and months of Indian captivity—a harrowing frontier ordeal. With a post office established in 1857, the town became a mail terminal and stage stop where lumber and buffalo hides moved through, supporting a school, churches, a doctor, and stores until the railroad bypassed it in 1882.
Why it matters
Strickling is a classic Texas ghost town—thriving on the stagecoach-and-freight economy, then fading the moment the rails ran elsewhere—and a reminder of the violent frontier struggles its settlers endured.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1850s, Central Texas was a frontier in the fullest sense. Texas had joined the United States in 1845, and settlers were moving steadily west from the older towns along the rivers into the hills and prairies beyond Austin. Burnet County, at the edge of the Hill Country, was part of that westward push, with ranchers and farmers taking up land in country that Comanche and other Native nations had long used and defended.
Life on that frontier depended on roads. Before railroads reached the region, mail, people and freight all moved by wagon and stagecoach. A town that became a stage stop or mail terminal had a real economic lifeline, with travelers, teamsters and news coming through regularly.
This was also a period of violent conflict between settlers and Native peoples who were fighting to hold their homelands. Raids, reprisals and captivities marked both sides of the frontier, and the memory of those years shaped how settlers like the Stricklings understood their own lives.
People & events
The town took its name from Martha Webster Strickling, who settled here in 1853 with her husband, Marmaduke. Her own life story stood out even by frontier standards. As a child, she survived the Webster Massacre near present-day Leander, one of the most notorious episodes of Central Texas frontier violence. According to the marker, around thirty settlers were killed. Martha survived, but she was taken captive and spent months among her captors before she returned.
Such an experience might have driven many people away from the frontier for good. Instead, Martha came back as an adult to settle land not far from where that tragedy happened. The community that grew around the Strickling place carried her name, a choice that suggests how well her neighbors knew her story.
A post office opened here in 1857, and Strickling became a mail terminal and stage stop. Heavy wagons carried tons of lumber and buffalo hides through the town, hides from the great herds that hunters were then pursuing across the plains. Strickling grew into a real community with a school, churches, a doctor's office and stores. Then in 1882 the railroad passed it by. Business drifted toward the rail line, and the town slowly emptied. Today, only its cemetery remains.
Its place in the American story
Strickling is a textbook example of one of the most common stories in American history: a town made by the road and unmade by the railroad. Across the country in the late nineteenth century, a rail line's route could decide which communities thrived and which faded. Towns left off the line often lost their merchants, their post offices and finally their people, sometimes within a few years.
The buffalo hides hauled through Strickling connect it to a much larger and sadder chapter. The mass slaughter of the bison in the 1870s and early 1880s pushed the species close to extinction and destroyed the foundation of life for the Plains peoples. It was closely tied to the end of independent Native power on the southern plains.
Martha Webster Strickling's captivity and survival reflect the frontier conflict that marked Texas and much of the West for decades. Her story is a reminder that the westward expansion Americans often celebrate was, for the people who lived it on every side, a time of loss, fear and violence as well as opportunity.
If you visit
There is no town to walk through here anymore. That is the point of the place. Stand at the marker and try to picture the stagecoaches, the creaking freight wagons loaded with lumber and hides, the store fronts, the school and the churches that once made this a busy crossroads.
The cemetery is the last physical trace of Strickling, and it is worth visiting respectfully if you can do so. Old graves are often the best record a ghost town leaves behind, with family names and dates that speak to who lived and died here.
This site pairs naturally with a drive through Burnet County and the nearby Hill Country, where you can follow the old frontier from Leander toward Bertram and beyond. It is a quiet, reflective stop, a good place to think about how quickly a community can disappear when the world's routes shift away from it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Martha Webster Strickling
- · Marmaduke Strickling
Related events
- · Webster Massacre
Themes & tags
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