MOUNTAIN CITY, TEXAS. Mountain
City was twelve miles north of San
Marcos in central Hays
County. It developed before the Civil War
as the supply center for an extensive farming
and ranching community. Mountain City had one
of the first post offices and stagecoach stops
between Austin and San Marcos. It reportedly
received its name from William Walton Haupt
when he became postmaster in 1858 or 1860. Haupt,
an Alabaman, moved from Bastrop
to Mountain City in 1857 and introduced to Hays
County Angora goats and Brahman cattle from
the old South. The community was originally
settled by Phillip Allen and perhaps three other
families in 1846. Within a decade it had several
stores churches, a school, and a sizable slave
population. Pioneer settlers included the family
of a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence,
Col. John W. Bunton, who arrived in 1851.
Mountain City also became the home of Jesse
Day, who in 1856 led one of the earliest cattle
drives from Central Texas to the Midwest.
The community suffered a rapid decline after
1880, when the International-Great Northern
Railroad completed its route from Austin
to San Marcos several miles east of the town.
The Allen family, who had been among the first
settlers, now led an exodus to the rail terminals
that grew up at Buda
and Kyle. The businesses, churches, and school
followed them in succeeding years, and by 1883
the post office had closed. Almost a century
later there was new activity at the old Mountain
City location; in the 1970s the towns of Wimberley,
Kyle, and Buda selected it as the site of a
new consolidated school. In 1984 a subdivision
previously known as Mountain City Oaks incorporated
on the site under the name Mountain City and
elected a mayor and city council. A newspaper
in the vicinity of Mountain City has been in
continuous publication since 1903, and has been
owned by only 2 families - the Harwell family
and the Barton family.
www.haysfreepress.com
In 2005 the population was
695.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mary Starr
Barkley, A History of Central Texas (Austin:
Austin Printing, 1970). Dudley Richard Dobie,
A Brief History of Hays County and San Marcos,
Texas (San Marcos, 1948)
Daniel P. Greene
MOUNTAIN
CITY, TX." The Handbook of Texas Online
