Llano County Granite Industry

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Llano County granite industry. Now settle in, because this is a story about what happens when the ground beneath your feet turns out to be worth a whole lot more than just something to stand on. It starts in 1888, and it starts with two men moving at the same time.

J. K. Finlay polished a stone right at his mill site, the first such polishing in the county, and over south of Llano, David Stewart opened a quarry.

Two men, one year, and a whole industry just waiting to crack open. Then along comes Frank Teich. Noted sculptor.

The kind of man who looks at raw stone and sees something finished inside it. Teich leased a quarry from Stewart, and by 1900 he had established Teich Monument Works. You let that sink in.

A sculptor setting up shop in a county sitting on thirteen varieties of granite. Thirteen. Now if that isn't a match made somewhere above the timberline, I don't know what is.

But here's the piece of this story that really ought to stop you cold. Llano County was holding something nobody had even named yet. A noted mineralogist by the name of N.

J. Badu went looking, and what he found was a form of granite unlike anything else on the books. It contained opalite flakes, and it caught the light in a way that earned it not one name but two.

Opalene, some called it. Others called it Llanite. Difficult to cut, mind you.

The marker's honest about that. But the quality of Llano granite, across all those varieties, turned out to be excellent. Excellent enough for buildings.

Excellent enough for monuments. Excellent enough that a sculptor, a quarryman, a mineralogist, and a man at a mill site all found their way to the same hard, glittering ground. Some places, the story is in the people.

In Llano County, the story goes a little deeper than that.

What the marker says

Llano County's granite industry can be traced to 1888 when J. K. Finlay first polished a stone from his mill site and David Stewart opened a quarry south of Llano. Prominent sculptor Frank Teich leased a quarry from Stewart and established Teich Monument Works in 1900. Thirteen varieties of granite were found in Llano County. Noted mineralogist N. J. Badu discovered in the county a form of granite called "Opalene" or "Llanite," which contains opalite flakes. Although difficult to cut, the excellent quality of Llano granite made it suitable for buildings and monuments.