DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this spot on Wimberley's Town Square. Now, some stories start with a boy and a long road, and this one is no different. Sometime around 1880, young Sidney J.
Pyland made the journey with his parents, all the way from Tennessee down to Wimberley. We don't know exactly how old he was when those wagon wheels finally stopped rolling, but the marker calls him a young boy, so picture that. A kid, a new town, a whole life still ahead of him.
Fast forward to 1895. Sidney is twenty years old now, and he opens a blacksmith shop right here, just above Cypress Creek, on the busy village Square. That word busy matters.
This wasn't a quiet corner. This was the pulse of Wimberley. And Sidney planted himself right in the middle of it.
Two years later, in 1897, he married Nellie Ann Wimberley. Then it was hammer down, day after day, year after year. Horseshoes forged, wagons built, wagons repaired, implements hammered out for the ranchers and farmers working the land all around.
Fifteen years of that. Fifteen years of fire and iron and the kind of work that leaves calluses you could strike a match on. Then, in 1910, Sidney Pyland did something that takes a certain kind of resolve.
He didn't just move his family. He moved his blacksmith shop intact, the whole operation, to San Marcos. The forge, the anvil, the business he'd built from scratch on this very ground.
And here's the thing that makes this spot worth stopping for. Sidney left, but the energy didn't. This site has kept right on humming as a hub of business activity on Wimberley's Town Square, same as it was when a twenty-year-old from Tennessee first fired up his forge and got to work.
What the marker says
While still a young boy, Sidney J. Pyland accompanied his parents on their journey from Tennessee to Wimberley about 1880. In 1895, at the age of 20, Sidney opened a blacksmith shop here, just above Cypress Creek on the busy village Square. He married Nellie Ann Wimberley in 1897. For 15 years Sidney forged horseshoes, built and repair wagons, and hammered out implements for area ranchers and farmers. In 1910 he moved his family and blacksmith shop intact to San Marcos. This site has continued to be a hub of business activity on Wimberley's Town Square. Incise: Sponsored by John and Mavis Woolsey