Town of Knippa
Knippa, Uvalde County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Served by the Texas & New Orleans Railroad since 1882, this area was settled in 1887 by George Knippa. A freighter who worked between East Texas and Mexico, Knippa also encouraged many friends to move to the fertile land of this county. In 1899 gold-mining was tried here by an aged, white-bearded stranger known as Wilson. In 1900 the community acquired a post office and in 1909 a town was laid out. Previously called Chatfield, it was renamed Knippa. The Trap Rock Mine, a stone and gravel business which started in 1913, is still in operation. 1969
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Reached by the railroad in 1882, this fertile stretch of Uvalde County was settled in 1887 by freighter George Knippa, who lured friends to the land he knew from hauling between East Texas and Mexico. A bearded stranger tried his luck at gold-mining here in 1899, a post office arrived in 1900, and the platted town—once called Chatfield—took Knippa's name. The Trap Rock Mine, opened in 1913, still works the local stone.
Why it matters
Knippa's rise from railroad siding to quarry town shows how transportation and mineral resources conjured communities out of the Texas brush.
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Related people
- · George Knippa
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Knippa Trap Rock Plant
Knippa, TX
The dark basalt beneath Knippa formed from volcanic lava that cooled more than 60 million years ago into the hard igneous stone known as trap rock. A prospector's 1907 search for gold turned up little of the metal but vast quantities of high-quality rock instead, and by 1919 the quarry here was the largest trap-rock operation in Texas, capable of producing about 100,000 tons a year and shipping it out by spur line to the Southern Pacific. So woven into the town was the plant that Knippa High named its team the "Rockcrushers" in 1946.
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