Telegraph Store and Post Office
Telegraph, Kimble County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This Kimble County landmark was named for a nearby canyon from which trees were cut for telegraph poles in the Mid-19th century. The store and post office were built about 1890-1900. The first commissioned postmistress was Ruth Holmes in 1900. For many years this has been the stopover place for vacationers along nearby south Llano River and travelers enroute to points south. The telegraph post office was the Kimble County address of Texas Governor Coke R. Stevenson. The site retains the rustic charm of its early years, and has served the community for a century.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Named for a canyon whose trees supplied telegraph poles in the mid-1800s, this remote Hill Country crossroads gained a store and post office around 1890–1900, when Ruth Holmes became its first commissioned postmistress. For generations it served as a stopover for travelers and vacationers along the South Llano River, and it even functioned as the local mailing address of Texas Governor Coke Stevenson. The rustic building has anchored this small Kimble County community for more than a century.
Why it matters
Rural stores and post offices like this were the social and economic hubs of frontier Texas, knitting scattered ranches into communities long before paved highways arrived.
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Related people
- · Ruth Holmes
- · Coke R. Stevenson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Stopping Place on the Fort Clark-Fort McKavett Military Road
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This route was one of many military roads built to link the frontier cavalry posts of Texas, running south to Fort Clark and north to Fort McKavett, both established in 1852. Paint Rock Springs, at the head of the South Llano River, made a natural midway rest stop, and in 1877 Major John B. Jones gathered his Texas Rangers here to launch a campaign against frontier outlaws. Beyond its military purpose, the road carried immigrants, cattle drovers, ranchers, mail riders, and freighters into the open country.
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On a lot where a public corral had operated since 1877, John Allen built a livery stable in 1879 that quickly became the busiest spot in early Junction. It fed and housed visiting ranch teams, hired out horses and buggies, and drew men to gossip and trade. Owned by T. M. Hodges in its final years, the stable was made obsolete by automobiles in the 1920s.
First Post Office
Junction, TX
Junction's first post office opened in 1876 under postmaster Harriet Kountz, who at first simply kept the mail at home. In 1879 her husband, Dr. Ezekiel Kountz, built a post office, drugstore, and mercantile on the square using lumber hauled from Austin, and the building also served as the county's first offices. The old store stood until it was dismantled in 1911.
Stevenson, Coke R., Texas Statesman
Junction, TX
Born in Kimble County in 1888 with barely two years of formal schooling, Coke R. Stevenson worked his way from a boyhood ranch job to owning a freight line, then rose through banking, law, and county office. He became the first Texan to hold the state's three highest offices, and as governor from 1941 to 1947 he turned a large deficit into a surplus while championing measures from the first driver's-license law to the Lower Colorado River Authority.