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History
in a Pecan Shell
Originally named Waringford when R.
P. M. Waring, an Irishman from Waringford, Ireland sold or donated land to the
San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway for its Kerrville
line in the late 1880s. In 1888 a post office from neighboring Windsor, Texas
moved across the Guadalupe River to Waringford.
The town's name was shortened
to plain Waring in early 1901. The population hovered between 100-150 until 1914
when it peaked at 300. Waring had most essential businesses as well as a lumberyard
and quarry.
The population fell to a mere 80 by the early 1950s and the
estimated population remains at just 73. |
Now
Entering The Town of Waring
Photo courtesy Will
Beauchamp, June 2010 |
Waring
Schoolhouse Historical Marker
Photo courtesy Will
Beauchamp, June 2010 |
Historical
Marker TextWaring
SchoolhouseAnglo
pioneers in a predominantly German-settled area built the west wing of this building
in 1891. Land for this first public school was given by Robert Percival Maxwell
Waring, a native of Ireland for whom the town had been named in 1888. Citizens
volunteered labor, funds, and materials for the building, and paid their children's
tuition of $1 to $1.50 per month. The east wing was added in 1903, and exterior
braces were applied in the 1930s. The school closed in 1954.
Recorded
Texas Historic Landmark - 1986 |
Waring
Depot Sketch by Jacinto
Guevara
Photo by John Troesser, October 2007 |
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Nearby Attraction:
Tunnel
of The Fredericksburg & Northern Railroad
... Today, if you follow FM 1376 from San
Antonio to Sisterdale, then take FM 473
west and go beyond the road to Waring, you'll find where an old but still
paved road forms (or used to form) a T intersection with 473. If you turn north
and follow the road and the bed of Black Creek, you will be paralleling the route
of the F&N, and just about the time you reach the ghost town of Hillingdon you'll
see, crossing the creek, the remains of the F&N's longest trestle. Just north
of that the road crosses almost directly over the top of it and there is an historical
marker you'll find the hill country's only railroad tunnel.
The tunnel
is still there, all 920 feet of it inhabited, in the fall, winter, and spring,
by millions of bats. The bat flight from the tunnel at dusk resembles rising smoke.
During late spring, summer, and early fall, it's home to more rattlesnakes than
you'll ever want to meet in one place again.
- From "The
Little Engine that Couldn't" by C. F. Eckhardt |
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