Remount Station

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how Duane tells it back to you. Way out in Kerr County, there's a little elm-log cabin with a story older than the county roads that carry you past it. Somebody built it during the 1850s over in Waring, and we don't know who.

The marker doesn't say, and that's a peculiar kind of mystery all by itself. An unknown settler, eight-inch elm logs, fitted together out on the Texas frontier, and then that person slipped right out of the historical record. The cabin stayed.

The builder didn't. You think about that a minute. Some folks leave their names carved in stone.

This one left a cabin. Maybe that's enough. Maybe that's more than enough.

Now, the cabin didn't just sit there looking pretty. By the 1870s it was doing honest work, offering food and lodging to stagecoach travelers moving between San Antonio and points west. Think about what that road looked like then.

Long, dry, and unforgiving. And here comes this cabin, elm logs solid as ever, saying come in, rest a spell, we've got something for you. But the piece of this story that gave the place its name, and its legend, is the horses.

At some point, the settler living there provided horses and saddles for Pony Express riders. That's what turned a simple cabin into something worth remembering. It became known as Remount Station and Stage Stop.

A place where a rider could swap out a tired horse for a fresh one and keep moving, keep the mail moving, keep the whole operation rolling westward. That name stuck. Eventually the cabin was moved to the Y.O.

Ranch, where it was restored, given back something close to its original dignity. Eight-inch elm logs, raised by hands we'll never name, still standing. Whoever you were, stranger, you built something that outlasted your anonymity.

That's a kind of immortality Texas has always been good at handing out.

What the marker says

Built during the 1850s in Waring by an unknown settler. Constructed with elm logs measuring eight inches wide. Offered food and lodging to stagecoach travelers between San Antonio and points west during the 1870s. Cabin was once the home of a settler who provided horses and saddles for Pony Express riders, so it became known as Remount Station and Stage Stop. Moved to Y.O. Ranch; restored. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967