The Badger Building
Burnet, Burnet County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Completed about 1883, this two-story limestone structure is representative of other commercial buildings located on the Courthouse Square in the 1880s. It was built for local financier Dr. W. H. Westfall and Captain Brandt Badger (b. 1839), a native of Georgia who had served in the Confederate Army from Texas during the Civil War. Badger and his son Walter operated a wholesale and retail drugstore on the ground floor. The second floor area, divided into five rooms, was leased for use as office space. Badger sold the business in 1885 and later, in partnership with Adam R. Johnson, helped establish the nearby town of Marble Falls (14 mi. S). For the latter part of the nineteenth century the structure housed a hardware store. In 1903 the newly formed Burnet National Bank was located here and remained at this site until it closed as a result of the economic depression of the 1930s. The Badger Building has also been used by the State Parks Board, the Burnet Rural Telephone Company, the Farm Loan Association, doctors, lawyers, and various businesses. From 1948 to 1959 it served as the Burnet Post Office. In 1966 the structure was occupied by the Youth and Community Center.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Completed around 1883, this two-story limestone building on the Burnet courthouse square was raised for a local financier and Captain Brandt Badger, a Georgia native and Confederate veteran who ran a drugstore on the ground floor while renting offices above. Over the following century it housed a hardware store, a national bank that failed in the Depression, telephone and loan companies, and from 1948 to 1959 the town post office. Few buildings have worn so many hats.
Why it matters
Its long parade of tenants makes it a living ledger of small-town commercial and civic life across three generations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1880s, Burnet was a county seat finding its footing in the Texas Hill Country. The frontier years of army posts and cattle drives were giving way to something more settled, and you could read that change on the courthouse square. Log and frame storefronts were being replaced by sturdy buildings of local stone, built by people who expected their town to last.
This was the Gilded Age, when railroads, banks and merchants were knitting small American towns into a national economy. A county-seat square was where that economy met everyday life. Farmers and ranchers came to town for court days, supplies, medicine and credit, and the buildings around the courthouse held the shops and offices that served them.
The Badger Building, finished around 1883, belongs to that moment. Its two stories of limestone typified the commercial blocks then going up on the square: a business on the ground floor and rentable rooms above, a practical layout that let one building earn its keep several ways at once.
People & events
The building began as a partnership between money and enterprise. Dr. W. H. Westfall, a local financier, joined Captain Brandt Badger to put it up. Badger was born in Georgia in 1839 and served in the Confederate Army from Texas during the Civil War. Like many veterans, he rebuilt his life in commerce. With his son Walter he ran a wholesale and retail drugstore on the ground floor. Upstairs, five rooms were leased as offices.
Badger did not stay in the drug trade long. He sold the business in 1885 and went on to a bigger venture. In partnership with Adam R. Johnson, he helped establish the town of Marble Falls about fourteen miles south. Johnson was a well-known figure in the region, a former Confederate officer who had lost his sight during the war and later became a determined promoter of Hill Country development.
After that, the building outlived its founders through one tenant after another. For the rest of the nineteenth century it was a hardware store. In 1903 the newly organized Burnet National Bank moved in and stayed until the economic collapse of the 1930s brought it down. Over the years the State Parks Board, the Burnet Rural Telephone Company, the Farm Loan Association, doctors, lawyers and other businesses all occupied its rooms. From 1948 to 1959 it was Burnet's post office, and in 1966 it became home to the Youth and Community Center.
Its place in the American story
Countless American towns had a building like this one, a sturdy block on Main Street or the courthouse square whose tenants tracked the nation's economic life. The Badger Building happens to keep an unusually clear record of that story.
Its tenants follow the arc of small-town America. First came the frontier merchant and the druggist, then the hardware dealer of the farm economy. Next was a hometown national bank, part of the era's expansion of local banking, and that bank's failure in the Depression, when bank closures hit communities across the country. After that came the farm credit and rural telephone services that reached the countryside in the twentieth century, and finally the post office and community center that served a modern town.
The Marble Falls connection adds a further thread. After the Civil War, many former soldiers on both sides turned to building towns, and the drive to found new communities, often on the promise of local stone, water power or a coming railroad, shaped much of the American West. Badger's path from a Burnet drugstore to co-founding a town is that pattern on a personal scale.
If you visit
Head for the courthouse square in Burnet and look for the two-story limestone front. Take a moment with the stonework. The Hill Country's pale limestone gives these old commercial buildings a warm, solid character, and this one was built to represent the square as it looked in the 1880s.
As you stand there, picture the ground floor as a drugstore with shelves of remedies, then a hardware counter, then a bank lobby, then a post office window. Upstairs, imagine lawyers and doctors working in the small leased rooms. Few buildings make it so easy to see a town change over time.
Burnet suits a Hill Country road trip, and the marker gives you a reason to keep going. Drive about fourteen miles south to Marble Falls, the town Brandt Badger helped found, and you can follow one man's story from a drugstore on the square to a new town on the Colorado River.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Brandt Badger
- · W. H. Westfall
- · Adam R. Johnson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Galloway House
Burnet, TX
The oldest part of this adobe-and-rock house was built in 1856 by Major Hugh H. Calvert, who also ran it as an inn. Landowner Enoch Brooks bought it in 1885 and enlarged it, and W. C. Galloway made further changes after acquiring it in 1899. Galloway was a prominent businessman, an organizer of the First State Bank of Burnet, and served as county tax collector and city mayor.
The Burnet Bulletin
Burnet, TX
Established in the early 1870s, the Burnet Bulletin has published continuously for well over a century, its first recorded editor George Whitaker serving until 1874. Bought by the pioneer Chamberlain family in 1898 and held by them until 1960, the paper weathered hardships including a 1920 fire that destroyed its offices. Since 1979 it has operated from this 1872 building, itself a veteran of duty as store, mortuary, telephone office, and even a temporary 1930s courtroom.
Oldest Commercial Building in Burnet
Burnet, TX
Logan Vandeveer, a hero of the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, came to this area around 1849 as a beef supplier to nearby Fort Croghan. He became Burnet's first U.S. postmaster and in 1854 built this native stone building, running a store on the ground floor while a Masonic lodge met above. The lodge held that upper floor for well over a century and still owns the structure.
Site of Mormon Settlement
Marble Falls, TX
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.