by JEN BIUNDO

Clyde and Janet Gooding dance to local Mountain City band Island Texas at last year’s Fire and Ice Festival. (Photo by Stephanie Jamail)

Before there was a Buda, and before there was a Kyle, there was a Mountain City. And like any self-respecting pioneer town, Mountain City had its own low-down whiskey joint.

Chicago, as the bar was known, was described as a place of “low doggery” and “gambling hell,” and with card-playing, killings and loose women, it scandalized the community through Mountain City’s heyday in the 1870s until the more respectable citizenry petitioned for its closure.

This Saturday, Mountain City – now a community decidedly without a rough and tumble frontier watering hole – will celebrate its 160th birthday from 10 a.m. until noon with a carnival, local farmer’s market, kid’s games, history presentations and more.

Longtime Mt. City mayor Phil Wilbur (left) helps Scotty Fisher (on ladder) with a community project in 1994. (Hays Free Press File Photo)

Nowadays, to most Hays County residents, Mountain City is just the name of a small incorporated subdivision off FM 2770 near Jack C. Hays High School, home to about 730 residents that live on shady, winding streets with names like Maple Drive and Live Oak Court.

But from the early 1850s until the 1880s, Mountain City was a sprawling community on the old Stagecoach Road that served as an important hub in the ranching and farming industries of the newly-formed Hays County.

The original Mountain City was centered near the modern community of the same name, but stretched from the Blanco River around present-day Kyle all the way to Manchaca Springs northeast of present-day Buda.

The first settlers, such as Chattanooga native Phillip Allen and his family, landed in Mountain City around the time of the Texas Revolution in 1835 and 1836. Allen had acquired more than 4,600 acres of land in what would become northern Hays County from Ben Milam’s colony grant from the Republic of Texas.

But American Indians in the area fought to maintain control of their ancestral lands, driving the settlers away. Allen left to fight against Mexico for Texas independence.

In 1846, after the Texas Rangers had been enlisted to drive out the Indians, Allen and his family successfully settled their land. When Hays County was formed two years later, Allen became one of the first commissioners and was active in local politics until his death in 1860.

Another early family was the Buntons. Tennessee native John Wheeler Bunton moved to Texas in the early 1930s, signed the Declaration of Texas Independence, and served on the first Texas legislature.

Just after the Texas Revolution, Bunton returned to Tennessee to marry his sweetheart, and brought back with him a company of 140 settlers for the new frontier. But while traveling by steamer from New Orleans to Texas, their ship was captured by a Mexican man of war and the party was imprisoned in Mexico city for three days.

According to historical lore, Bunton’s smooth-talking wife, Mary Howell Bunton, convinced their captors that they were American citizens legally entering Texas under the colonization law granted by Mexico to Stephen F. Austin.

After their release, the Buntons continued on to Mountain City, where they built their “Rancho Rambolette” and began to farm and raise a family.

Other early settlers included families such as the Vaughans, Bartons, Barbers, Porters, Moores, Rectors and Turners.

The Texas population began to grow rapidly in the 1850s, and Mountain City was no exception. By the 1850s, the small farming and ranching community was starting to thrive, with schools, churches, businesses, mills and gins.

In 1855, the community built its first school, Live Oak Academy, with a professor Gibson as the first teacher, followed by John Edgar. The satellite communities of Elm Grove and Science Hall, near the sites of the recently-constructed schools by the same names, also had schools and small commercial centers.

1855 also saw the formation of the first house of worship, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Baptist and Methodist churches followed in the 1870s.

Along with the churches came the Chicago bar, located on the southern end of Mountain City, near the present day location of Wallace Middle School.

Col. W.W. Haupt, who came to Mountain City in 1957, opened a store around the location of the current Hays High School that became home to the Mountain City post office; he also served as postmaster. Two other prominent stores, run by Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Barber, were located about a mile north.

The civil war era saw a population boom, and many young men of Mountain City served in the 32nd Cavalry regiment under Col. P.C. Woods and Capt. J.G. Story.

But much like the small towns of the 1940s that would wither when bypassed by the interstate, Mountain City’s fate depended on the railroad coming to town.

For isolated communities at the mercy of the slow stagecoach line for communication with the world at large, the railroad was truly a life-changing development, bringing mail service, trade, and connections with the bustling cities of Austin and San Antonio.

The fight for a depot was fierce, and the family of State Senator Fergus Kyle, living in the Blanco River area south of Mountain City, had the political connections to get the tracks laid through their neck of the woods, bypassing Mountain City to the east.

The Kyle family deeded 200 acres to the International-Great Northern Railroad, securing their place in history as founders of a town that would bear their name. From that moment on, Mountain City’s days were numbered.

“Who is to blame that a depot is not located here? Ah, that is the question,” lamented a Mountain City newspaper columnist in the San Marcos Free Press in 1880. “Surely any man can see that a large and growing community like this of Mountain City, Science Hall and Elm Grove, to say nothing of the country up Onion and Dripping Springs, should have a depot.”

Their loss of the railroad wasn’t for want of trying. Haupt had deeded 100 acres of land to the railroad, along with more land by the Breedlove, Barton and Barber families, the columnist noted.

“Not until a few weeks ago did these gentleman learn that the railroad company knew nothing of the deeds, though they were made to their agent in the presence of the county clerk,” the columnist wrote. “What was done with them?”

As the fledgling railroad towns of Buda and Kyle sprang to life in the early 1880s, the residents of Mountain City began their exodus. Mountain City quickly dried up. Local schools hung on through the early 1930s, the only hint that the area had once been the regional center of commerce.

For almost a century, the old Mountain City reverted to a stretch of pretty rural land at the gateway of the Hill County, until Texas’s population boom began to slowly push residents back into the region.

The first resurgence came when the Buda and Kyle school districts made the controversial decision to consolidate in 1969, and picked Mountain City as the site for a new high school based on its position midway between the two towns.

In the late 1970s, the first homes were constructed in the Mountain City Oaks subdivision, an upper middle class neighborhood sitting on top the nearly-forgotten ranching community that had born the same name.

Hays County Justice of the Peace Beth Smith moved into the sixth house built in the new subdivision in 1979. In the 1980s, the city of Austin was aggressively annexing land into its extraterritorial jurisdiction, and the small subdivision felt a target on their backs.

“Austin was closing in on all sides, so we incorporated to avoid that,” Smith said. “I believe we did exactly the right thing at the right time.”

Smith served as the first mayor of the new city from 1984 to 1998.

“We held our first council meeting in Vern and Lynda Meyers’ dining room,” Smith recalled with a laugh. “We had city council meetings there for probably ten years.”

The city council later moved their city hall into a small construction office, and are now completing renovations on a house at the entrance of Mountain City that will serve as the town headquarters.

In 1990 Mountain City’s population was 377, and by the 2000 census, it had risen to 671. Now it’s in excess of 700, according to census estimates.

Many of the new residents appreciate the close-knit nature of their pleasant, shady community, but know little of the history of the land that it occupies.

This weekend’s festival will feature talks from local historians, including Hays Free Press publisher Bob Barton, whose family has lived on the same Mountain City property for seven generations.

Celebrate
• Birthday activities will take place near the main entrance of Mountain City from 10 a.m. until noon.