DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's got the story, and here's how I tell it. Now, most railroads you hear about in Texas were big iron operations with grand designs on the whole continent. But every now and then, you stumble across a line that had one job, did it well, and then quietly disappeared — and the Scholten Railroad is exactly that kind of story.
Twenty-five miles of narrow-gauge track, running from Lometa out into San Saba County, operating somewhere around 1912 to 1920. Not long in the grand scheme of things, but don't let that fool you. This little railroad had some serious work to do.
It was owned by the Scholten Brothers Cedar Company — Edward and Alfred Scholten, brothers who had come all the way from Holland and found themselves in the cedar country of central Texas. Now that is a journey. From the lowlands of Europe to the cedar brakes of Lampasas County.
Those two built a narrow-gauge line that hauled cedar posts and piling down to the Santa Fe Line at Lometa, where that timber could be loaded up and distributed across fast-growing West Texas. Think about that for a second — every fence post, every piling that went into building up those far western towns, a good number of them may have rolled down these very tracks first. And to run that operation, the Scholten Brothers employed five hundred workers.
Five hundred people on a twenty-five-mile stretch of narrow-gauge railroad cutting through cedar country. The headquarters for that whole enterprise stood just one hundred yards west of where you're standing right now. The track is gone.
The cedar's grown back. But the ground remembers.
What the marker says
(Owned by the "Scholten Brothers Cedar Company") A 25-mile narrow-gauge railroad that operated about 1912-1920 from Lometa to San Saba County. Constructed by Edward and Alfred Scholten (from Holland), line hauled cedar posts and piling to Santa Fe Line at Lometa to be distributed to fast-growing West Texas. Employees totaled 500. Headquarters were located 100 yards west.