Old Blanco County Courthouse

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. There's a building sitting in Blanco County that has lived more lives than most people dare to dream about, and it all started with a man named F. E.

Ruffini. He designed it in Victorian style, gave it that grand, ambitious look that says somebody meant business, and in 1886 it went up as the first permanent county courthouse Blanco County ever had. First permanent.

They were proud of that. You could hear it in the word. Permanent.

And then, well, four years later, in 1890, the county seat packed up and moved to Johnson City. Four years. That Victorian beauty stood there, all dressed up with nowhere particular to go.

Now here is where the story stops being a disappointment and starts being something else entirely. A man named Chas. E.

Crist purchased the building, and from that moment on, that structure took on a career so varied it almost defies a single breath. It became a school. Then a bank, the Blanco National Bank no less.

Then it housed the offices of the Blanco County News, so the words going out across the county were being written inside walls that once held court. Then it was an opera house. Then a Farmers' Union Hall.

And then, from 1936 all the way to 1970, it served as a hospital. A place where life and death did their quiet, serious work inside the same Victorian walls where a gavel once struck wood. By the time all that was done, the building had outlasted every single identity anyone had ever given it.

Today it houses the Blanco Museum of Early West. One courthouse, one county seat that moved on, one purchase, and a career that would make most buildings blush. That's Blanco County for you.

What the marker says

Designed in Victorian style by architect F. E. Ruffini. Erected in 1886 as first permanent county courthouse, building served only four years--until 1890. County seat then moved to Johnson City. Purchased by Chas. E. Crist, the structure entered varied career as school, Blanco National Bank, office of "Blanco County News," opera house, Farmers' Union Hall, and hospital (1936-70). Now houses Blanco Museum of Early West. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark -- 1972