The Army's Camel Experiment RoadyGoat

1856

In eighteen fifty-six, the United States Army imported seventy-five camels from Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey and brought them to Camp Verde, Texas — roughly forty miles southwest of present-day Kerrville. The experiment was championed by Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, who reasoned that camels were better suited to the desert terrain of West Texas than horses or mules. He was right. The camels outperformed mules, carried heavier loads, needed far less water, and navigated rocky terrain more sure-footedly. Robert E. Lee evaluated them and wrote that they possessed exceptional endurance, docility, and sagacity. Then the Civil War began. Davis defected to lead the Confederacy, Confederate forces captured Camp Verde, and the program collapsed without its political champion. The Army sold sixty-six camels at auction. Some escaped or were released. The last documented feral camel sighting in Texas was recorded in eighteen seventy-five.

6.2 mi away

Ingram, TX RoadyGoat

Ingram's got that Hill Country charm, you know? That laid-back feel you can't quite put your finger on. Seems like it's always been a place where folks could catch their breath and maybe even find a little inspiration.

7.9 mi away

Ingram, TX RoadyGoat

Ingram sits nestled in the Guadalupe River valley, its 1,647-foot elevation offering a gentle panorama of the surrounding Hill Country. Named for Robert Ingram, who generously donated the land, the town took root in 1879. You can imagine those early days – live oak saplings dotting the landscape, the river a constant companion, and the promise of a new community in the air. State Highway 39 now runs right through it, but back then, life moved at the pace of a horse-drawn wagon. The Guadalupe River, so vital to Ingram's existence, has also been a source of hardship. The flood of 1932 was a devastating event, reshaping the town and requiring significant rebuilding. But Ingram persevered, and today it's known for its peaceful, artistic vibe. The annual Hill Country Run brings motorcycle enthusiasts roaring through, a testament to the enduring spirit of adventure that seems to permeate the very air. And with Kerrville, home of the Texas High School Rodeo Association Finals, so close by, there's always a touch of that Texas spirit in the area. It's a place where the past and present intertwine, where the river flows, and the creative spirit thrives.

7.9 mi away

Butt, Howard Edward

1905

Howard Edward Butt, businessman, was born April 9, 1895, in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Charles Clarence and Florence (Thornton) Butt . His father, a pharmacist, suffered from tuberculosis, so the family moved to Kerrville in the Hill Country of Texas, where the drier climate was believed therapeutic. To support the family, Florence Butt purchased wholesale groceries in 1905 with which she opened a small store in Kerrville later that year. Her cash resources at the time the store opened were sixty dollars. The family of five lived in rented rooms over the store. Howard, the youngest of three boys, helped his mother with the business, delivering groceries first in a child's wagon and later on horseback. He began to manage the store at age sixteen. He graduated as the valedictorian of Tivy High School in 1914. After hitchhiking to California for the summer, he harvested grapes to earn his return train fare and visited the home of his favorite author, Jack London, to whom he introduced himself. Before enlisting in the United States Navy for service in World War I , Butt chose for himself the middle name Edward. He served from 1917 to 1919, part of that time as aide to the commandant at the Great Lakes Naval Station. In 1919 he returned to Kerrville and joined his mother in managing the small family store. In 1921 he converted the store to cash-and-carry instead of charge and deliver, a move that was considered quite a gamble at the time. He attempted four expansions of the business–a feed store in Kerrville and grocery stores in Center Point, Junction, and Brownwood–all of which failed. Other attempts in such towns as Eagle Pass, Uvalde, and Crystal City also failed. On December 5, 1924, Butt married Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth of Kerrville ( see BUTT, MARY E. H. ). In 1926 he opened a store in Del Rio that proved successful. In 1928 he borrowed $38,000, moved to the Rio Grande valley, and purchased three small stores. He began calling his stores H. E. Butt Grocery Company in 1935 and changed the name to H-E-B in 1946. Butt expanded the grocery business in the Rio Grande valley and South and Central Texas, entering Corpus Christi in 1931, Austin in 1938, and San Antonio in 1942. Company headquarters moved to Corpus Christi in 1940. As one of the first to begin developing "one-stop shopping," he added a meat market, delicatessen, and bakery to his stores. By the 1950s H-E-B was the leading food retailer in South and Central Texas. By 1960 the company operated over eighty stores and its own food processing and distribution facilities. Butt's son, Charles C. Butt, succeeded him as president in 1971 and as chairman in 1984. Butt was a thirty-third-degree Mason and a Baptist deacon. He established the H. E. Butt Family Foundation in 1933, one of the earliest philanthropic foundations in Texas. He and his wife pioneered programs instrumental in eliminating tuberculosis in South Texas. They provided libraries and recreational facilities–swimming pools and tennis courts–to many South Texas communities, making seed-money gifts and urging municipal governments to implement these projects, particularly in low-income areas. He also began developing the H. E. Butt Foundation Camp in 1954. Under Butt's leadership, H-E-B regularly gave the maximum philanthropic contributions allowable under federal law. He maintained a strong sense of involvement in the communities that his businesses served. He was a member of the board of directors of Texas A&I college and the University of Corpus Christi. On March 30, 1972, the Texas Senate gave Butt a special commendation for his contributions to the state. He died at age ninety-five on March 12, 1991, in Corpus Christi. At the time of his death there were more than 170 H-E-B supermarkets.

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H-E-B

1905

H-E-B, a Texas-based supermarket chain, began in 1905 when Florence Thornton Butt moved her family to Kerrville, Texas. With a sixty-dollar loan, she established Mrs. C. C. Butt's Staple and Fancy Grocery, a one-room grocery store on the ground floor of the family home. In 1919 she turned management of the business over to her youngest son, Howard Edward Butt . Howard Butt, who delivered groceries from the store by wagon as a boy, went on to introduce major low-cost distribution innovations that eliminated middlemen and maximized profits when he took over the store's management. In 1922 he replaced the credit-and-delivery system with a policy of self-service cash-and-carry, thus increasing the turnover of goods and heralding a new era of shopping. He also renamed the business the C.C. Butt Cash Grocery and diversified his store by adding a meat market. Despite a lack of success at early attempts to expand into Central Texas, Butt was able to establish a successful enterprise at Del Rio in 1926, followed in 1927 by the purchase of three grocery stores in the lower Rio Grande valley. By specializing in low-priced goods the company survived the Great Depression so successfully that Butt was able to introduce employee picnics and a group life-insurance policy, move company headquarters to the Rio Grande valley , and expand to nearly twenty stores in Southwest Texas, with a gross business of $2 million in 1931. The company also organized a buying department and construction division. It began advertising with free gifts-dispensed in one case by throwing tagged live chickens, good for free groceries, and handfuls of nickels off a store roof-and later gave away cars, mink stoles, trading stamps, and cash prizes. In the mid-1930s, Butt again changed the name of his enterprise-this time to H.E. Butt Grocery Company. Under this name, he moved into manufacturing by acquiring the Harlingen Canning Company and opening a bakery in Corpus Christi in 1936. In 1940 company headquarters moved from the Valley to Corpus Christi to centralize distribution to its growing territory. In 1942, the year Butt installed air-conditioning in stores and introduced frozen foods, he also opened the first store under the name H-E-B, in San Antonio. During World War II the company's Harlingen Canning Company produced food for the armed forces, and won a War Food Administration "A" award for its food processing. Women served as store managers, and H-E-B became known for its interest in personnel development. A store that opened in Austin in 1944 became the fiftieth H-E-B. Grocery stores grew into supermarkets in the 1950s, and during that decade H-E-B introduced in-store fish markets, butcher shops, drugstores, and bakeries, though Butt's stores carried no beer or wine-Butt was a traditional Baptist deacon-until his son took over in the 1970s. The Texas Gold Stamp Company, a subsidiary, was organized in 1955 to produce consumer trading stamps, and the first retail support center, a manufacturing and distribution center, was opened in San Antonio in 1964. In 1971 Charles C. Butt, a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania, took over his father's position as president and chief executive officer of the company. Under his administration, the firm restructured its management and introduced generic goods. A milk plant opened in San Antonio in 1976, and the company introduced Futuremarkets, a further diversification that added in-store pharmacies, photo processing, and video rentals. During the 1980s, H-E-B stores began offering bulk foods and fresh flowers. The Company headquarters moved to the renovated army arsenal on the San Antonio River in 1985. In 1988 Forbes named H-E-B the thirty-sixth largest private company in the United States, with annual sales of $2 billion. At Howard Butt's death in 1991, the company, centered around its San Antonio Retail Support Center, had grown to 175 stores and twenty-one video stores

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James Kerr

1825

(1790-1850) Kentucky native James Kerr, the son of a Baptist minister, was reared in Missouri. Kerr fought in the War of 1812 and was later sheriff of St. Charles County, Missouri. He married Angeline Caldwell in 1818 and served in the Missouri Senate and House of Representatives. Kerr was appointed Surveyor General of the Texas colony of Green DeWitt in 1825. With his wife, three children and several slaves, he joined Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colony in Brazoria. In August 1825 he set out to select a site for the DeWitt colony. Kerr named the community Gonzales in honor of the governor of Coahuila, Mexico. By this time, Angeline Kerr and two of the children had passed away. Kerr was active in area politics and law enforcement during the formative years of the Republic of Texas. He acted as attorney and surveyor for Benjamin Rush Milam in 1827. He negotiated for peace before the Fredonian Rebellion, signed a treaty with the Karankawa Indians and fought other tribes. He was the Lavaca delegate at the Convention at San Felipe de Austin in 1832 and served as a member of the Second and Third Conventions. Two years later, he married Sarah Fulton. He became a major in the Texas Rangers in 1835 and in the Republic of Texas army in 1836. He was elected to the Third Texas Congress in 1838. Kerr's later years were spent practicing medicine in Jackson County. In 1856, pioneer Joshua Brown gave the land around this site in order that Kerr County be named for his longtime friend, Texas frontiersman and patriot James Kerr.	(2000)

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Butt, Florence Thornton

1905

Florence Thornton Butt, whose grocery store was the first link in the H-E-B chain founded by her son Howard Edward Butt , was born in Buena Vista, Mississippi, on September 19, 1864, the daughter of John and Mary (Kimbrough) Thornton. She spent her youth in Buena Vista, where she often assisted her two pastor brothers in holding revivals. She later enrolled in Clinton College and, as the only female in her class, graduated with highest honors. Afterward, she taught school. In 1889 she married pharmacist Clarence C. Butt. The couple lived in Mississippi and Tennessee before moving to Texas in 1904 in search of a more suitable climate and better medical facilities to treat Clarence's tuberculosis. After a year in San Antonio, the family, which included their three young sons, moved to Kerrville. With her husband unable to work, Mrs. Butt became an agent for the A&P Tea Company, taking and delivering grocery orders door-to-door. She accumulated a small stock of groceries and invested sixty dollars to open the C. C. Butt Grocery on Main Street in Kerrville. The store was on the ground floor of a two-story building, which Mrs. Butt rented for nine dollars a month. She combined her business and domestic responsibilities by moving her family into the second floor of the building and using her sons as delivery boys. She continued to run the store until 1919, when her son Howard returned from the navy and took over as manager. She then concentrated on religious and civic efforts in Kerrville. She was a devout Baptist and a leader in the Eastern Star. She died at her Kerrville home on March 4, 1954, after suffering a stroke, and was buried in Glen Rest Cemetery. Her survivors included her sons Howard and Eugene. By the end of the twentieth century the H-E-B stores were the largest privately owned food chain in the nation.

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Schreiner, Captain Charles

1854

(1838 - 1927) Enterprising businessman. Born in France. Moved (1852) to U.S. with parents. Served with distinction in Texas Rangers, 1854-1857. Fought with Confederacy in Civil War. In 1869 began general store in Kerrville. Activities expanded to include banking, ranching, and marketing wool and mohair. He also started one of first wool and mohair warehouses in Texas. By 1900 he owned 600,000 acres of land, and by 1945 his country store was one of most progressive in the southwest. Among his many philanthropic activities was the founding of Schreiner Institute (College). (1970)

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Site of Animal Health Discovery

1930

In this building (at Menard) during late 1930s, Dr. Edward F. Knipling (b. 1909) advanced theory screwworms might be eradicated by releasing sterile male flies to break chain of reproduction and save livestock from role of host to parasitic larvae that destroy livestock and wildlife. During 1950-51, this laboratory (removed to Kerrville area) was site of sterilization of male screwworms with irradiation, in procedures by Dr. R. C. Bushland and D. E. Hopkins. The outcome: eradication of the screwworm and saving of domestic and wild animals of the United States. (1972)

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Kerrville, Texas

Music in Kerrville

Songs About Kerrville

Artists From Kerrville

Rivers & Roads in Song near Kerrville

History of Kerrville

The Army's Camel Experiment RoadyGoat

Ingram, TX RoadyGoat

Ingram, TX RoadyGoat

Butt, Howard Edward

H-E-B

James Kerr

Butt, Florence Thornton

Schreiner, Captain Charles

Site of Animal Health Discovery

Things to Do in Kerrville

Everything Near Kerrville