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"Trouble still brewed in Burnet County. County authorities wanted certain members of the Odle Family, in particular John D., Alvin C., and Walter P. called "Will." They bore a hard reputation with both robbery and murder on the records. The family experienced tragedy with itself as well as causing trouble for neighbors. John D. had married Miss Annie M. McCarty on July 20, 1882, but the relationship became strained Between Odle and his father-in-law Bryant V. McCarty..." Read more

Walter Furley was born June 11, 1928, in Marble Falls, Texas. A beloved pioneer broadcasting personality Furley did regular commentaries for KZTV 10 and KEDT radio from 2002 until just prior to his passing in 2013. This book is the complete collection of transcripts ... Read more

Steve Petty's autobiographical account of his life journey, from his early childhood days in Marble Falls, picking cotton with his two brothers in the summer sun and enjoying his mother's homemade biscuits, to his time in the Navy, to the development of his career as a successful salesman and later business owner... Read more 

Marble Falls: The Homecoming of Gerry Frey

The boomer love story continues, and Gerry’s perspective is added to the mix; he talks about the heat of romance with a woman his own age. The happy midlife couple enjoy their first Christmas in Texas on their new farm and then travel back where they met, Australia. When they return home, family comes to disrupt things. Grown children who had ghosted them for years now want to be in their lives, then threaten them when things don’t go their way. It's a shaky truce and danger finds them just as Gerry’s new film nears completion at his film studio in Texas.... Read more

Vendetta Gold

"I think there's a good wagon road from Burnet to the Marble Falls and Burnet is on the railroad. I felt peculiar pretending to argue my way into a feud. Harkey shook his head and worried. It was gratifying in a way to see him fret like that on my account. It's dangerous, Royal. Barbed wire is liable to be dangerous anywhere in Texas right now, but especially in between the Standards and the Flatts..." Read more

The Texas Hill Country Pastor: The Man with the Red Socks

The Story of Brother Max Copeland, Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Marble Falls, Texas for 42 Years . . . Learn more

In the late 1870s, orphans Benjamin and Molly are finally old enough to strike out on their own. Leaving behind the life they knew in Dry Ridge, Kentucky, the siblings head for Texas, But along the way, hardship strikes when one of the axles on their Conestoga wagon fails just outside of Marble Falls, Texas. Deciding to seek shelter for the night, the pair comes across an abandoned white rock house and agree to stay there until they can get on the road again. Soon after, they meet Joe Eagle, a local Indian boy who saves Molly from a rattlesnake. The three quickly become friends, and Molly soon discovers that she has feelings for Joe. When the siblings decide to stay in Marble Falls and make enough money to buy the white rock house . . . read more

March, 1908 "It was the kind of balmy spring day in Oakalla that made a person forget the inevitable heat of Texas summers. Anna Tabitha Opened the side door to let go the pen-up heat of the kitchen, and the jasmine-scented breeze off the wraparound porch riffled the lace of the dining room curtains and coaxed tickling wisps off of the combs of her swept-up hair. Standing at the open door, she raised her arms high tucking the hair back in place..." Read more

"During the late 1880s, the Cornett-Whitley gang rose on the Texas scene with a daring train robbery at McNeil Station, only miles from the capital of Texas. In the frenzy that followed the robbery, the media castigated both lawmen and government officials, at times lauded the outlaws, and indulged in trial by media. At Flatonia the gang tortured the passengers and indulged in an orgy of violence that earned them international recognition and infamy. The damage that the gang caused is incalculable, including the destruction, temporarily, of a Texas Ranger company..." Read more

Arguably, no other institution has transformed the heart of Texas like the Lower Colorado River Authority. Born in the Great Depression of the 1930s, LCRA built a chain of dams and brought predictability to the cycles of extreme droughts and floods that had long plagued Austin and other communities. It also brought hydroelectric power—and with that, modern-day civilization—to the hard-scrabble regions of Central and South Texas . . . read more

"As Burnet County became more law-abiding, Dead Man's Hole fell from usage. But as time passed, people began telling stories of its dark past. It became the most haunted venue in the area...", historian Mike Cox regales readers with over fifty stories about the fascinating people, history and places of middle Texas . . . read more

"It was August 17, 1858, while living in Burnet county, I had an engagement with several Indians..." The history of William Banta, a Texas Ranger, from 1840s to the 1870s. He tells his own story of a law man in the wilderness of Texas . . . learn more

Covers the family of Daniel Boultinghouse and his 14 children. Daniel married Sarah Brown in 1817 Carmi, Illinois. To this union was born five children. After migrating to Scott County, Arkansas and Sarah's death there in 1846, Daniel married Mary Frances "Fannie" Shelton. Fannie and Daniel had nine children, three born in Scott County, Arkansas, six born after they migrated to Burnet County, Texas ... read more

Nestled along Hamilton Creek in the hills of Central Texas, the city of Burnet began in the mid-1800s as a settlement across the creek from Fort Croghan. Initially called Hamilton, it was a travel crossroads, making it an important trade center. Logan Vandeveer built the first commercial limestone building in 1854, and Peter Kerr, a cattle merchant, later donated 100 acres of land for the county seat...Read more

The story is of the heritage of Leona Pearl (Ross) Moreland in and around the Burnet County, Texas area. She was born in Burnet County in 1887 and died in Mills County, Texas in 1975. The story begins in the days of the Republic of Texas in both DeWitt Colony and Washington-on-the-Brazos. As families immigrated further west for land and greater opportunities, the Hugh Hutson Calvert and Robert E Ross families found themselves around Burnet County, Texas... Read more

Ryan Murray was on a fishing trip on his family ranch in Burnet County, Texas, in 2013 when he came across something sticking out of the bank of Rocky Creek that appeared to be a piece of chalk, but he suspected it was a bone. He started digging around the object but soon discovered it was a large bone. With a little more digging, Murray determined there were several bones, and he was onto a whopper of a tale... Read More

When the Wallace Riddell family first moved from the deep country-side into the Burnet County jail in 1939, Mrs. Riddell found her circumstances more primitive than at her abandoned backwoods home. The jail jail cookstove was out back, in a dirt-floored lean-to open to the air and she was expected to feed family and prisoners with this device. Moreover, the Riddells quickly discovered jail harbored rats... Read more

This e-book focuses on the Texas historical markers in Burnet County, Texas. The complete text of each marker appears on each page. In addition, each page features a photo showing more than simply the marker itself. The building, structure or landscape the marker describes is an integral part of each page. Each page also features explicit driving directions, addresses and accurate, tested GPS coordinates ... Learn  more

The waterfalls that gave Marble Falls its name have been covered by Lake Marble Falls since 1951, when a series of dams was completed on the Colorado River to prevent flooding along the river. The possibilities offered by water power at the falls and mining at nearby Granite Mountain encouraged Gen. Adam R. Johnson and his partners to lay out the town of Marble Falls in 1887. In modern times, when the Lower Colorado River Authority lowers the level of the lake, waterfront owners can repair boat docks and guests at nearby hotels and restaurants can see portions of the ancient rocky ledges... Learn more

The story of a small Texas farm town's roller-coaster ride through the Great Depression years, and how it laid the foundations for modern Burnet...Learn more

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by Michael W Owens

This novel is about a teenage boy named Wade in Texas during the Depression Era. He is going through some of the normal trials of growing up - siblings, schoolwork, bullies, romance, and embarrassing personal issues. Besides these, he is also confronted with racist attitudes toward certain Mexican-American friends he has made... Read more

This is the true story of Nimrod Johnson Miller, whose life was filled with adventures that few will ever experience. Born the seventh son of a Pennsylvanian farmer, he left his home in Cass County, Georgia to join the Confederate Army at the age of 20. Serving in the 18th Georgia Regiment, he fought in every major battle from Yorktown to Gettysburg. After his capture and release from the Union Army, Nimrod left behind the world he knew for the lawless and free plains of Texas. Despite all the oppression he faced, first as a soldier in the Civil War, and through his gradual rise to Burnet County Sheriff in Reconstruction-Era Texas... Read more

In the nineteenth century, Texas’s advancing western frontier was the site of one of America’s longest conflicts between white settlers and native peoples. The Texas Hill Country functioned as a kind of borderland within the larger borderland of Texas itself, a vast and fluid area where, during the Civil War, the slaveholding South and the nominally free-labor West collided. As in many borderlands, Nicholas Roland argues, the Hill Country was marked by violence, as one set of peoples, states, and systems eventually displaced others... Read more

N.O. Reynolds (1846-1922) has remained somewhat a mysterious figure, his Texas Ranger career being overshadowed by such names as Frank Hamer, Sam Walker, and Bill McDonald. Historians Chuck Parsons and Donaly E. Brice bring the life of Reynolds back to the prominence he deserves and present a complete picture of the man who brought a greater respect for the law in Central Texas... Read more

by Noah Smithwick

“In 1827 I started out from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with all my worldly possessions, consisting of a few dollars in money, a change of clothes, and a gun, of course, to seek my fortune in this lazy man’s paradise...” Noah Smithwick's memoir of that time, is a fascinating account of the early history of the Lone Star State when life was extremely tough for these early pioneers . . . read moe

An area so isolated that it was known as " The Dark Corner of Burnet County "; Smith's grandmother had lived there for fifty - five years , and had never during that time visited even once the town of Marble Falls. We see in him, from earliest childhood, a fierce, unquenchable necessity to be first, to win, to dominate—coupled with a limitless capacity for hard, unceasing labor in the service of his own ambition ... Read more

Burnet city marshal, Wolf was appointed sheriff of Burnet County on 1 June 1884. He was elected on 4 November 1884 and reelected on 2 November 1886. Wolf served until November 1888. He was killed by Constable John Taylor. Taylor was upset with him because Wolf had arrested his son. Constable Taylor came to the marshal's office, and harsh words were exchanged between the two men. Gunfire soon followed, and Taylor shot Wolf in the leg, severing an artery. He died from the wound two days later . . . Read more