Blanco held its county seat by seven votes. The county was created in February 1858 with a requirement that its seat sit within five miles of the centre, and by 1862 the legislature had carved off Kendall County and compensated Blanco County with pieces of Hays and Burnet, which left the town of Blanco nowhere near the middle of anything. The northern end of the county wanted the courthouse moved. A December 1876 effort to call an election failed outright. In August 1879 petitioners from the north got a poll set for 28 October, and Blanco won it by those seven votes. Eleven years later, in another contest the Handbook of Texas calls hotly contested, Johnson City finally took the seat, and the records were carted north in 1891.
Some of what the fight destroyed had already gone. In 1876 a fire took the Masonic lodge, the old courthouse and the county records with it, so the archive that moved in 1891 was younger than the county.
The building Johnson City put up to replace it went to the San Antonio architect Henry Phelps, with the contract awarded on 1 October 1915 to James Waterston, a stonemason who had come from Scotland in 1883 to work on the state Capitol at Austin. Rough stone was hauled in by wagon and mule team from Deer Creek two miles south, lime for the mortar came from four miles southeast, and the finished blocks were lifted by block and tackle pulled by mules. The Commissioners Court accepted it on 1 September 1916 with a free barbecue, speakers down from Austin, a talent show and a dance. The rivalry, by the Handbook's account, is still hot.
Getting there
30.2781, -98.4115
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