Farmers, Ranchers, the Land and the Falls - Texas Parks & Wildlife ...

A History of the Pedernales Falls Area, 1850–1970
The school/church building and the surrounding grounds became the
symbolic center of this emerging old-stock community. People who died in
the area were interred in a small cemetery near the school/church; by 1900
about nineteen people, including several infants, had been buried there. The
flat, open meadow just east of the school (outside the present park boundary)
became known as “Schoolhouse Flats,” and locals gathered there to play baseball
games. At about this same time, a wagon road called “Mill Holler” was worn
into the ground between this area and Cypress Mill, as the old-stock farmers in
the Pedernales Falls area traveled to Cypress Mill to visit the store and the post
office, or to gin whatever cotton they produced. (Wagon ruts identifying some
sections of the old Mill Holler road can still be seen on surrounding ranchland
and in Pedernales Falls State Park, next to the trail that runs through what was
once Greene Wilson’s tract.) Those living on the western side of the river could
connect to the road by taking their horses and wagons across the low-water ford
that came to be known as the Trammell Crossing. 33
Figure 7. The Cypress Mill store and post office, where the settlers in the Pedernales Falls
area collected their mail. Photo from Ottilie Goeth, Memoirs of a Texas Grandmother,
reprinted with permission from Eakin Press.
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