Kerrville, Texas

Everything Kerrville is known for

13 songs mention this city 2 artists from here

Music in Kerrville

Songs About Kerrville

Kerrville Axe
Cactus Lee
95%
"Title track — song about the historic Kerrville cedar axe"
Leaving Kerrville
Ordinary Elephant
95%
"I was shaking Kerrville dirt, off my dirty feet"
Kerrville Strong
Hill County Music
80%
"Song about Kerrville"
The Kerrville Song
Emily Kaitz
80%
"Song about Kerrville"
Living the Dream
Big Ugly Dog
50%
Loner
Carson Jeffrey
23%
"Living in a Robert Earl song hoping the road goes on some more"
gadalupe days
gary p. nunn
10%
All I Need
Paul Eason
7%
"Robert Keen, he's floatin' on a breeze through the cedar trees"
Texas Love Song
Slaid Cleaves
6%
"Playing Robert Earl and Billy Joe"
10 Miles to Kerrville
Chuck Wimer
6%
"10 Miles to Kerrville"
Screw You, We’re From Texas
Josh Abbott Band
5%
"Robert Earl"
Songs About Texas
Pat Green
3%
"And Robert Earl Keen he can be just like a coat from the cold"
I’ve Been Everywhere...In Texas
Brian Burns
3%
"Kerrville"

Artists From Kerrville

A
Aaron LaCombe
americana Pop: 19
S
Staci Foster
folk Pop: 6

Rivers & Roads in Song near Kerrville

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Kerrville.

Guadalupe River 17 songs Interstate 10 32 songs Frio River 13 songs

Musical Heritage

The Father of Country Music Chased Clean Air to Kerrville RoadyGoat

Kerrville was once a place sick people came to breathe, and in 1929 the most famous of them was Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman and the man country music calls its father. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1924, when doctors believed dry air was the only real treatment, Rodgers came to the Hill Country for the climate and started building a hilltop home he named Blue Yodeler's Paradise. He moved his wife and daughter into the two-story house in the summer of 1929, flush with record royalties from the blue yodels that had made him a national star. The good times were short. The stock-market crash and his own lavish spending wrecked his finances while the disease wrecked his lungs, and he was forced to sell the Kerrville house and leave around 1931. Rodgers died in New York City on May 26, 1933, at just 35, two days after a final string of recording sessions. For a couple of years, though, the founder of an entire American music tradition called the hills above Kerrville home. (Source: Handbook of Texas; Texas Highways.)

RoadyGoat →

The Road Goes On Forever, and It Runs Through Kerrville RoadyGoat

Texas songwriter Robert Earl Keen has called the Kerrville area home for decades, working from a ranch in these hills outside town. Keen built one of the most loyal followings in Texas music writing literate, story-driven country and folk, and his signature song, the outlaw ballad The Road Goes On Forever, first appeared on his 1989 album West Textures before becoming a Lone Star anthem covered far and wide. He's a Kerrville fixture as much as a touring star, the kind of resident songwriter who fits a town that has hosted the Kerrville Folk Festival since 1972 and treats songwriting as a local craft. Keen retired from full-time touring after a roughly 40-year run, but his roots in the Hill Country never moved. Driving these roads, you're passing through the country that shaped a writer whose whole catalog is built on Texas characters, long highways, and the kind of small-town detail you only get from living somewhere like this rather than just singing about it. (Source: Wikipedia; Texas Highways.)

RoadyGoat →

History of Kerrville

The Airplane With the Backward Tail, Built in Kerrville RoadyGoat

Kerrville is one of the few small towns in America with its own line of airplanes, and they wear an aerodynamic signature you can spot from across a ramp. Mooney Aircraft moved to Kerrville in early 1953, and here designer Al Mooney finished the M20, the most successful of his twenty designs. Its tail fin looks like it leans forward, the leading edge nearly vertical while the rest sweeps back, an optical quirk that actually sits roughly straight up in level cruise. The real engineering story is speed for the money. Mooney paired a low, slick laminar-flow wing with a tight, clean airframe so the early M20 could push near 170 miles an hour on a modest 150-horsepower engine, an efficiency that became the brand's whole identity. The first models even used wooden wings and tails; pilots long argued the wood gave a smoother ride in turbulence, and the wood wing was considered to have an indefinite service life. More than 11,000 Mooneys have been built across the decades, fast little four-seaters from a Hill Country town. (Source: Wikipedia; Plane & Pilot.)

RoadyGoat →

Kerrville, TX RoadyGoat

Kerrville wouldn't be Kerrville without James Avery Jewelry. It's more than just a business here; it's woven into the fabric of the town. Founded in 1954, in a small workshop, the company started with the simple idea of creating beautiful, meaningful jewelry. The Hill Country, with its quiet beauty and strong sense of tradition, proved to be the perfect place to nurture that vision. There's something about the pace of life here, a certain appreciation for craftsmanship and enduring values, that aligns perfectly with the brand. The higher elevation, the clear air, and the proximity to the natural beauty of the Guadalupe River, all contribute to an atmosphere that fosters creativity and attention to detail. It's a place where artisans can focus on their work, drawing inspiration from the surrounding landscape and the spirit of the community. James Avery Jewelry has grown far beyond its humble beginnings, but its heart remains firmly rooted in Kerrville, a testament to the enduring appeal of quality and craftsmanship in a place that values both.

The Kerrville Axe RoadyGoat

Step outside in Kerrville and you'll see it everywhere — Ashe juniper, the scrubby "cedar" that blankets the Texas Hill Country, drinks the water table dry, and chokes out grass. In the 1920s, two Kerrville men, Henry Weiss and Frank Krueger, had had enough of fighting it with axes designed for hardwood. So they designed their own. The Kerrville Axe — also called the Grey Gorge Axe — had a narrower, more curved head built for the wiry, twisted grain of juniper. Cedar choppers across the Hill Country picked them up, and for decades, if you cleared cedar in this part of Texas, you probably swung one. It's the kind of small, local invention that gets remembered mostly because the work it did mattered. There's even a song about it — Cactus Lee, a Hill Country songwriter, wrote a track called "Kerrville Axe" honoring the tool and the men who made it.

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.

Tsha Handbook →

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

Tsha Handbook →

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)

Historical Marker →

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.

Tsha Handbook →

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)

Historical Marker →

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)

Historical Marker →

Things to Do in Kerrville

historical 17.2 mi away
Luckenbach Texas

Luckenbach was a failing ghost town of three residents when Hondo Crouch bought it in 1970 for thirty thousand dollars and declared himself mayor of an…
historical 15.1 mi away
The Treue der Union Monument

Comfort's Treue der Union monument is the only memorial to Union soldiers on former Confederate soil south of the Mason-Dixon line. It honors thirty-four…
historical 15.1 mi away
The Nueces Massacre

In August 1862 sixty-eight German Unionists from the Comfort area fled south toward Mexico rather than fight for the Confederacy. Confederate soldiers caught…
quirky 22.4 mi away
ALL WELCOME / COME BACK Street Names

Stand at the Gillespie County Courthouse and look at the cross streets running off Main. Heading east the first letters spell ALL WELCOME — Adams Llano Lincoln…
quirky 24.6 mi away
The Town That Sold for Thirty Grand

In 1970 old Benno Engel retired as postmaster of Luckenbach Texas and placed an ad in the local paper that read TOWN FOR SALE -- lock stock and dancehall. The…
quirky 24.7 mi away
The Song Nobody Had Seen

When Waylon Jennings recorded Luckenbach Texas (Back to the Basics of Love) in 1977 it shot to number one on the country charts and number 25 on the pop…
historical 15.1 mi away
The Freethinker Colony

Comfort was founded in 1854 by German intellectuals fleeing the failed revolutions of 1848. They were freethinkers -- educated liberals who opposed slavery and…
historical 15.1 mi away
The Fachwerk Buildings

Comfort has the most intact collection of fachwerk -- German half-timber construction -- in Texas. The settlers used the same building techniques their…
day trip
Day Trip to Kerrville🗿(FULL EPISODE) S11 E3

Featured on The Daytripper — a full-episode local travel guide.

Everything Near Kerrville

220 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Kerrville on the Map
All music from Texas → · Browse more cities