Site of Prairie Mountain School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Site of Prairie Mountain School, out in Llano County. Now, this story starts the way so many good Texas stories do, with German immigrants and pioneer settlers putting down roots in the middle of nowhere and deciding, as Texans tend to do, that they'd build something worth keeping. The community they established went by the name Starks for a while, and folks planted themselves there in the mid eighteen hundreds.

They called that stretch of country Prairie Mountain, and the name stuck. Come 1906, a school called the Putman School, which had been sitting near Hickory Creek, picked up and relocated to this very site. When it arrived, it got a new name to go with its new address.

Prairie Mountain School. Now, the community didn't just haul in a school and call it a day. Community members built a one-room schoolhouse right there on land leased from a woman named Bettie A.

Rountree. And here's the part that tells you everything about how tight-knit a place this was: that one little room served as a school for the children and a place of worship for everybody else. One room carrying the whole weight of a community's education and its faith.

That is not a small thing. By 1924, the community had grown enough to need something bigger, and a larger building went up that year to serve the school children. It kept serving them all the way until 1948, when Prairie Mountain consolidated with the Llano school district.

The Marschall family, for their part, later conveyed the land to the community, a gesture that says something quiet but lasting about the kind of people who made this place. Worship services continued in that building until 1970, when the last one was held. But the building didn't sit empty and forgotten.

It kept right on going as the Prairie Mountain community center. Some buildings outlast their original purpose and find a second one. This schoolhouse, born out of a relocation and a community's own hands and a lease from Bettie Rountree, managed to do exactly that.

What the marker says

German immigrants and pioneer settlers established the Prairie Mountain community, once known as Starks, in the mid 1800s. In 1906 the Putman School near Hickory Creek relocated to this site, and was renamed Prairie Mountain School. Community members built a one-room schoolhouse, which also served as a place of worship, on land leased from Bettie A. Rountree. A larger building, constructed in 1924, served school children until Prairie Mountain consolidated with the Llano school district in 1948. The Marschall family later conveyed the land to the community. The last worship service was held here in 1970, but the building continued to serve as the Prairie Mountain community center. (2001)