Hunt

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Hunt, out there in Kerr County. Way back in the late 1850s, farmers and ranchers started putting down roots along the North and South Forks of the Guadalupe River. Two communities grew up from that settling, Japonica and Pebble, and for a good while that stretch of Hill Country just quietly went about its business.

Then came 1912. Alva and Lizzie Joy bought land right at the confluence of those two forks, and the central settlement that developed there, they named it in honor of Robert Hunt, the prior landowner. Simple enough, and honest.

The Joys weren't done, either. Alva established a post office in 1913, and by the 1930s an independent school district had formed to go along with it. Now, something else started happening in the 1930s.

Artists began finding their way to Hunt, drawn to what the Hill Country had to offer, including the acclaimed E.M. Schiwetz. Word gets around about a place like that.

Over the decades that followed, Hunt became a center for summer camps, exotic game ranches, and religious and corporate retreat facilities. That's a lot of different worlds sharing the same river bends. But through all of it, Hunt held onto what it was: a small, rural community.

Some places just know who they are, and they don't let go.

What the marker says

Farmers and ranchers settled along the North and South Forks of the Guadalupe River in the late 1850s, forming the Japonica and Pebble communities. In 1912, Alva and Lizzie Joy bought land at the confluence and named the central settlement that developed there in honor of Robert Hunt, the prior landowner. Alva Joy established a post office in 1913, and an independent school district formed in the 1930s. By the 1930s, the area began attracting artists, including the acclaimed E.M. Schiwetz. During the next decades, Hunt became a center for summer camps, exotic game ranches, and religious and corporate retreat facilities, but retained its identity as a small, rural community. (2005)