DUANE
Duane's take
The way I tell it, this comes straight off the official historical marker for Robert Thomas Hill, right here in Comanche County — so let's give this man his due. Now there's a story that starts in one world and ends in another, and the thread connecting them runs right through the Texas Hill Country. Robert Thomas Hill came into this world on August 11, 1858, in a Nashville, Tennessee, home his parents kept in fine aristocratic style.
Comfortable. Proper. The kind of beginning that sets a boy up for a settled life.
But then came the Civil War, and it took everything. By 1864, young Robert was an orphan, living in his grandmother's Nashville home. He was six years old, and the world he'd been born into was gone.
He stayed in Nashville for a good while after that. Then in 1874, he left. Headed for Comanche County, Texas, to join his brother Joe, who'd found work at a local newspaper called the Comanche Chief.
Robert signed on there too — printer's ink and headlines, not exactly the life of a scientist. But here's where fate starts clearing its throat. Somewhere nearby, a geological formation called Round Mountain caught his eye.
He studied it. Couldn't stop studying it. A passion for geology took root in Robert Thomas Hill right here in Comanche County, Texas, and once it took hold, it didn't let go.
In 1882 he entered Cornell University. Five years later, in 1887, he graduated with honors in geology. And the very next year — 1888 — the University of Texas established a geology chair specifically to honor Hill for his landmark discovery of Cretaceous deposits on Round Mountain.
That same formation he'd stared at as a young newspaper employee out on the Texas frontier. He participated in the state geological survey. He identified and named the Balcones Escarpment — put a name on a feature that cuts across Texas like a great stone seam.
In 1891 he became president of the Cosmos Club, a society of the nation's most distinguished scientists. That is not a small thing. That is the top of the mountain, so to speak.
Through the 1890s and into the early 1900s, Hill studied aquifer formations across the Southwest United States, the West Indies, Mexico, and Central America. His publications represent, by the reckoning of the marker itself, one of the most distinguished geological studies produced by a single individual. Robert Thomas Hill died on July 28, 1941.
And here's where the story lands — quietly, perfectly, like a stone settling into its rightful place. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered over Round Mountain. The same formation in Comanche County that first stirred something in a young man working at the Comanche Chief.
The place that made him a geologist. Some men spend their whole lives searching for the thing that defines them. Robert Thomas Hill found his right here — and in the end, he came back to it.
What the marker says
Robert Thomas Hill began life on August 11, 1858, in the aristocratic comforts of his parents' Nashville, Tennessee, home. His family, however, suffered tragic losses during the Civil War and by 1864 young Robert was an orphan living in his grandmother's Nashville home. He left Nashville in 1874 for Comanche County, Texas, to join his brother, Joe, as an employee of a local newspaper known as the "Comanche Chief." Hill developed a passion for geology while studying a nearby formation known as Round Mountain. He entered Cornell University in 1882 and in 1887 graduated with honors in geology. In 1888 the University of Texas established a geology chair to honor Hill for his landmark discovery of Cretaceous deposits on Round Mountain. He participated in the state geological survey and identified and named the Balcones Escarpment. In 1891 Hill became president of the Cosmos Club, a society of the nation's most distinguished scientists. In the 1890s and early 1900s Hill studied aquifer formations in the Southwest U.S., West Indies, Mexico and Central America. Hill's publications represent one of the most distinguished geological studies produced by one individual. Following his death on July 28, 1941, Hill's body was cremated and his ashes scattered over Round Mountain. (1995)