2 posts tagged “railroad”
A little past 9 a.m. yesterday, the first copy of the Sept. 29, 1887 Kerrville Eye to be printed in Kerrville in 119 years rolled off of our digital press. What had originally been printed by Robert Guthrie (at the building which still bears his name on the corner of Earl Garrett and Main Streets in Kerrville) using moveable type smashed directly on waiting paper had been transformed into binary data — strings of ones and zeroes — and translated into color images at our Water Street office.
The original had been printed only a few blocks away from my office, but getting a copy of this important newspaper for Kerrville proved to be quite difficult. The University of Texas, my alma mater, had it squirreled away in the Center for American History. They wanted a fortune for its release — more than $200. Actually, they wanted a fortune for a photograph of the newspaper, including $100 for “preservation fees.”
Several bureaucrats at the Center told me how reasonable their fees are, and how their funding had been cut, etc., etc., etc.
To help insure this newspaper is not held for ransom again I will be happy to provide free copies to interested people at our office at 615 Water Street. I am also posting copies of the four pages on the front window of our shop. The old newspaper makes for interesting reading.
I had wanted a copy of the newspaper because it is the issue published as the railroad came to Kerrville in 1887. My search for this newspaper began when Joanne Lochte Redden loaned me some photographs of a mysterious parade in downtown Kerrville. I will post these photographs in the front window of my office, too.
The old photographs show a parade approaching the Heritage Star (at the intersection of Earl Garrett and Water Streets today) from three (count them, three) different directions. The photographs show flags and bunting everywhere, and two large archways erected on Water Street; one about where One Schreiner Center is today, in the 800 block of Water Street, and one where Pampell’s is today, in the 700 block. The puzzle came from a banner beneath the archway near where Pampell’s is today: it read “Wilkommen.”
It was my theory that the banner was meant for visitors to our city for whom “Wilkommen” was an everyday greeting; several communities near Kerrville conducted most of their everyday business in German until the late 1910s. What would bring a lot of German-speaking visitors to Kerrville, I wondered?
I thought it might have been the first train to arrive here in early October 1887.
According to the Texas Transportation Museum website, “at 11:45 AM on Oct. 6, 1887, the first train arrived in Kerrville. On board the six Pullmans were 502 passengers, 200 from San Antonio, 131 from Boerne, 141 from Comfort and 30 from Center Point. Altogether this was 200 more people than actually lived in Kerrville. It was a banner day for the town, with parades and speeches.”
I was hoping this copy of the Kerrville Eye would list some of the preparations being made for the arrival of the train. Since the Eye came out each Saturday, the Sept. 29 edition would have one week earlier than the train the following Saturday.
Reading over the issue I find some things around the Kerrville Eye office were, well, let’s just say they were relaxed. The front page of the issue is dated Thursday Sept. 29, 1887. The inside pages are dated Thursday, Oct. 6, with the explanation: “It will be noticed that the outside of this issue is dated one week later than the other. This resulted from the postponement of the barbecue; the outside was printed and off the press before this occurred. As the issue was 2,000 [copies printed], we considered it too much paper to waste and time and labor to loose [sic] to print 2000 more to correct so slight an error.”
So the issue I’ve tracked down was printed for the big day, the day the first train pulled into Kerrville.
More on this newspaper next week. If you’d like a copy, please stop by our office.
Until then, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native.
Ms. Carolyn and I snuck away this week for a quiet dinner at Rails, the little restaurant housed in the old railway depot on Schreiner Street, near Sidney Baker.
Many newcomers to Kerrville would be surprised that Kerrville had railway service up into the 1970s, but it did. There are many of us left who remember the trains that came to Kerrville.
Rails, by the way, is a nice spot for an excellent meal. Entrees range from below $10 to a few above $20, and everything I’ve tried there is very good. I especially like their use of the old depot, which was renovated by Mark Stone, because preserving some of our old buildings is so important.
There was a period when so many of our old buildings were demolished (in the name of progress) that I wondered if anything old would survive. In the span of a few short years landmarks such as the Bluebonnet Hotel, the First United Methodist Church, the Kellogg Building, the old bus station and the old wool warehouses downtown all vanished; many beautiful old homes along Sidney Baker Street also disappeared. So I am glad the old depot survived.
The building was in danger of being demolished when the Walkers saved it, if I remember correctly, running a hamburger restaurant there, and I believe there was another restaurant in the building before Rails opened several years ago.
Sitting there this week I had time to look at the old building and remember the trains that came slowly through town.
By the time I came on the scene here most of the remaining trains were freight trains. I do not remember a passenger train; they must have stopped earlier.
Hugh Hemphill, a train enthusiast and author, tells me he has a film made from the caboose of the last train to Kerrville, in 1971. Mr. Hemphill, who has written several histories of trains in Texas, is also with the Texas Transportation Museum in San Antonio. He would like to bring the film of the last train to Kerrville here and present it to the public if enough people are interested.
According to the Texas Transportation Museum website, “at 11:45 AM on October 6, 1887, the first train arrived in Kerrville. On board the six Pullmans were 502 passengers, 200 from San Antonio, 131 from Boerne, 141 from Comfort and 30 from Center Point. Altogether this was 200 more people than actually lived in Kerrville. It was a banner day for the town, with parades and speeches.
“At the center of it all was Captain Charles Schreiner, whose visionary plans for the community were being realized in front of his eyes. He had been a significant part of the effort to raise the $180,000.00 demanded by the railroad, the San Antonio and Aransas Pass, before it began work just over a year earlier, August 26, 1886. With the 71 mile line complete, Kerrville's future growth and expansion were assured.”
The depot which now houses Rails restaurant came later, in 1915, according the website. The first depot had been destroyed by fire in 1913, and for 2 years the community had been without a depot.
Of the new depot, the Kerrville Mountain Sun reported “the structure is to be of brick, and will be modern throughout. When completed it will be one of the handsomest passenger depots in a small town in the state.”
Sitting there this week, in the soft light, listening to classical guitar over the restaurant’s speakers, it was hard to imagine the building as a passenger depot.
My own memories of the train include its low rumbling and clacking as it passed by the playing field next to First Baptist Church. Many of us children (who should have been inside the church instead of playing baseball outside it) would run alongside the train as it passed, begging the engineer to blow the whistle.
On those evenings we were actually sitting inside the church we’d listen for the train. In those days, before air-conditioning was considered such a necessity, the big blue stained glass windows of the church would often be left open. In addition to the occasional bird (or bat) that flew into the sanctuary, the rumbling of the train was always a welcome distraction. Again from our pews we children would silently urge the engineer to blow the train’s whistle, and when he did, the preacher would pause, look out the south windows, and wait.
Even this brief respite was welcome.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who often daydreamed, as a boy, of hopping the train as it left town, just to see where it went.
