Joseph Bird settled between Cypress Creek and the Pedernales in about 1854 with his wife Eliza and six children, built a log house, and gave his name to a settlement called Birdtown that had been renamed Round Mountain by the time its post office opened in 1857, the second in what became Blanco County. Bird was a frontier Baptist minister, postmaster from 1859 to 1866 and again from 1873 to 1874, a Confederate first lieutenant at Camp Groce, a rancher, and Blanco county judge in the early 1890s, with twelve children in the end. The hill the town is named for stands two miles northwest and reaches 1,595 feet, though the Handbook of Texas never quite joins its entry for the town to its entry for the hill. The village was a stage stop on the mail route between Austin and Fredericksburg, chartered an academy in 1871 that reached two hundred students, and built a Methodist church in 1876 that has been restored, as has Bird's log cabin, put up around 1858.
The Round Mountain Stage-Coach Inn and Stable of 1874 was listed on the National Register on 31 March 1978, and the nomination names Elitha Smith Martin as its builder.
The best documented life in the place belongs to her. Born in Patrick County, Virginia in 1830, Elitha Smith Martin married John Martin in 1848, came to Texas in 1856 with four children and settled in Llano County, where five more were born. After her husband died in 1869 she moved to Round Mountain with the younger children and built the two storey hotel, a livery stable and a general mercantile store. She was appointed postmaster on 4 December 1879 and served until 16 May 1896, keeping the post office in her own store for sixteen years.
Getting there
30.4316, -98.3448
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