Doss School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Gillespie County, there's a school that has held on when just about every other little rural schoolhouse in Texas quietly closed its doors and faded into the cedar. The marker for Doss School tells a story that starts back in 1884, when somebody decided the children out here needed a place to learn, and so a school began on Doss-Spring Creek Road, about three and a half miles south of where you're standing now.

That was the seed of it. Ten years later, the school found its way to this very site, because a man named Tom Nixon donated the land. They put up a small frame structure, and that was enough, for a while.

Then in 1905, they built a limestone schoolhouse, the kind that says we're not going anywhere. And sure enough, in 1927, the present building was added. The Onion Creek school merged in over time, and so did the Squaw Creek school, each one folding into Doss like chapters gathered into a single book.

What's remarkable, and the marker makes a point of saying so, is that through all of it, through the mergers and the decades and the changes that have swept through rural Texas, Doss has kept its small student-teacher ratio. One of the last of its kind in the whole state. Not a monument to what was.

Still going.

What the marker says

One of the state's few remaining rural school systems, Doss School began in 1884 on Doss-Spring Creek Road (3.5 mi. S). Ten years later, land at this site was donated by Tom Nixon, and a small frame structure was built. In 1905, a limestone schoolhouse was built, and in 1927 the present building was added. Over the years, the Onion Creek and Squaw Creek schools have merged with Doss, but the school has maintained its small student-teacher ratio. An important part of the Doss community, the school has played a significant role in the history of education in Gillespie County. (1985)