Mason, Texas

Everything Mason is known for

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Music in Mason

Songs About Mason

nine miles north of mason
dub miller
10%
"nine miles north of mason thats where i make my stand"
Tough Little Boys
Gary Allan
10%
"Well I didn't cry, when Old Yeller died"

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Interstate 10 23 songs

History of Mason

Mason, TX RoadyGoat

Mason, Texas, might look like a quiet Hill Country town nestled at 1,545 feet, offering those expansive views, but it holds a rich history. Fort Mason, built back in 1851, was the seed that started it all, protecting settlers and drawing folks in. Even before that, legend has it there's still buried treasure somewhere nearby – gold bars, no less, waiting to be found. The town's seen its share of hard times, with devastating floods in the 1800s testing its spirit. But resilience runs deep here. The old courthouse, where the secession vote took place back in '61, still stands as a reminder of those turbulent times.

Mason, TX RoadyGoat

Mason's story is deeply intertwined with Fort Mason, perched as it is at over 1,500 feet, offering views that stretch across the Texas Hill Country. The fort, established in 1851, was a beacon of security in a wild land, drawing settlers and laying the foundation for the town itself. You can still feel that history in the air around the old fort, and some say a different kind of treasure lies buried nearby, left behind in those unsettled times. The Civil War cast a long shadow here. In 1861, this very courthouse was the site of a vote on secession, a moment that split the community. But Mason's story is also one of resilience. The floods of the 1800s brought devastation, testing the spirit of the early settlers, yet they rebuilt, stronger each time. Ranching and agriculture have always been the backbone of the economy, a constant through the booms and busts.

Mason, TX RoadyGoat

Mason owes its existence to a need for protection. Fort Mason, perched high up at over 1,500 feet, wasn't just a military outpost; it became the nucleus around which the town grew. From that vantage point, soldiers kept watch over the vast Hill Country, offering security to settlers pushing westward. Ranching took root in the fertile valleys, agriculture followed, and suddenly, a community was born. Of course, those early years weren't without hardship. The floods that swept through the area tested the town's resolve, but the people of Mason are not easily deterred. Today, folks come for different reasons. Some are drawn by the whispers of buried treasure, the legendary gold bars supposedly hidden near the old fort. Others seek the panoramic views from the high ground, that sense of open space that defines the Texas Hill Country. But if you ask a local why people truly stay, they'll tell you it’s the spirit of the place. It’s the resilience forged in those early struggles, the tight-knit community, the pride in traditions like Friday night lights watching the Mason Punchers, and the simple, enduring connection to the land. And maybe, just maybe, a taste of Mason County Tea, brewed with local herbs, helps keep that spirit alive.

Mason - The Hoo Doo War

1875

The Mason County War of 1875-1876, known as the Hoo Doo War, was a bloody feud between German settlers and American cattlemen over cattle rustling and vigilante justice.

Fort Mason

1851

After the Mexican War and the annexation of Texas by the United States, the population of the state began to increase rapidly, but the increasing numbers were crowded into a limited area because Indians controlled the majority of the state. To open new areas and provide protection for settlers, in 1848 the United States War Department authorized a line of army forts from the Rio Grande to the Red River. Fort Mason's location on Post Oak Hill near Comanche and Centennial creeks in the northern part of what was then called Gillespie County was chosen by Lt. Col. William J. Hardee, assisted by Richard Austin Howard , on July 6, 1851. Hardee left the actual establishment of the post to Bvt. Maj. Hamilton W. Merrill and companies A and B of the Second Dragoons. The post was most likely named either for Lt. George T. Mason, who was killed at Brownsville during the Mexican War, or for Gen. Richard Barnes Mason, who died only a year before the fort was established. During the next ten years, or until the beginning of the Civil War , the fort played an important part in settlement of the area. Settlers at first stayed close to the fort, but as the aggressive attitude of the military became apparent, additional settlers located farther from the post. The Indians-Kiowas, Lipan Apaches, and Comanches-were driven farther away and began making fewer raids into the settlements. The fort was closed several times during that decade, first in January 1854. It was reoccupied by Company A, First Dragoons, from March to May and was occupied by various companies of the Second United States Cavalry from January 14, 1856, to March 29, 1861, when it passed into the hands of the secessionists. The fort reached its maximum population in January 1856, when the headquarters and companies B, C, D, G, H, and I of the Second Cavalry were all stationed there, with Col. Albert Sidney Johnston in command. Twenty officers stationed at Fort Mason before the Civil War became generals. Twelve fought for the Confederacy, eight for the Union. Among these generals were Earl Van Dorn, Fitzhugh Lee, E. Kirby Smith, George H. Thomas, Robert E. Lee, John Bell Hood , William J. Hardee, and Philip St. George Cooke. Fort Mason was designated regimental headquarters for the Second Cavalry several times. For a short period during 1862 the Confederate Army held 215 men prisoner, mostly civilians accused of being Union sympathizers, in the fort. During August 1862 they were marched to Austin. Indian depredations during the Civil War and immediately afterward were worse than they had ever been. The area was terrorized by killings, thefts, and nuisance raids. Texas state troops and minutemen had been unable to cope with the problem. The United States Army, in the form of the Headquarters Company with field staff and officers and the regimental band and Company F of the Fourth United States Cavalry , reoccupied the fort on December 24, 1866. Gen. John Porter Hatch was the commanding officer. The fort was repaired and improved through the use of civilian artisans and military labor. Reconstruction lawlessness also affected military personnel; a large number of desertions and courts-martial were reported. Cavalry were replaced with soldiers from the Thirty-fifth Infantry over a period of time. The last inspection of the fort occurred on January 13, 1869. The report listed twenty-five buildings, mostly vacant and in need of repair; only sixty-nine men were present. The order to close the fort was carried out on March 23, 1869. During 1870 the state of Texas organized several companies of frontier forces. Fort Mason was reopened in September of that year as headquarters for Companies A and B, Frontier Forces. Capt. James M. Hunter, later county judge of Mason County, was in command for most of that year. During the next year the forces were disbanded or moved, and for the last time the fort was closed. Although the fort buildings and land became private property, the rock buildings wer

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Mason County War

1874

The Mason County War, commonly known as the Hoodoo War, was one of a number of feuds that developed over the stealing and killing of cattle. As early as June 25, 1874, Wilson Hey, presiding justice of Mason County, wrote Governor Richard Coke requesting that troops be stationed in the county to help deal with cattle rustling . Since many of the settlers of the county were Germans , there began to be a perception that they were pitted against the American-born residents, and neither group was able to get protection from the cattle thieves. The trouble began seriously when the sheriff, John Clark, jailed nine men on charges of stealing cattle. Before a trial was held, four of them escaped, but a mob of about forty men took the remaining five from the jail on February 18, 1875, led them to a place near Hick Springs, and hanged them. Daniel W. Roberts of the Texas Rangers , a few of his men, and a group of citizens followed the mob but were not in time to save the prisoners. Lige Baccus and his cousin were dead; Tom Turley was hanged but not dead; a man named Johnson escaped; and the fifth, Wiggins, was shot, and died the next day. Though a district court investigated the incident, nothing came of it. On May 13, 1875, Sheriff Clark sent Deputy Sheriff John Worley to Castell to bring Tim Williamson to Mason to make bond on a charge of cattle stealing. Worley and his prisoner were attacked by twelve men with blackened faces. Though Williamson was not armed, he and his horse were killed. No trial was held for this murder, and a real feud ensued. Scott Cooley, a former Ranger, swore revenge for the death of his friend Williamson. He collected the names of the men he thought responsible for Williamson's death, got together a following of his own-including John and Mose Beard, George Gladden, and John Ringgold-and began a ruthless retaliation that resulted in the killing of at least a dozen men. One of his early victims was John Worley, who was killed on August 10, 1875, while he was working on his well. It was commonly agreed that Scott Cooley shot him through the head and took his scalp. A number of violent incidents followed Worley's death, and sources disagree over the names and dates. The citizens of Mason sent a petition to Governor Coke asking for protection. A week later John Ringgold and several others are said to have killed John Cheney (Cheyney) as he was preparing breakfast for some strangers at his home. The governor sent Maj. John B. Jones with twenty or thirty men from Company A and ten from Company D of the Texas Rangers to quiet the difficulties. On September 28, when they reached Cold Springs, they found Clark and fifteen to twenty followers, who said they had heard that the Cooley faction was heading that way to "burn out the Dutch." That day Daniel Hoerster was shot off his horse in broad daylight as he was passing the Southern Hotel, and Peter Jordan (a friend of Hoerster's) and Gladden were wounded. Jones made an investigation at Cold Springs before he joined Daniel Roberts to attempt to get to the source of the trouble. During a gunfight at Keller's store on the Llano River, Clark and Keller's son wounded Mose Beard and George Gladden. Beard died, but Gladden was sent to his home at Loyal Valley to recover. At some point during the feud, a mob appeared at John Gamel's ranch on Mill Creek looking for Gamel and William Coke. They arrested Coke and Gamel's foreman, Ike Beam, and Sheriff Clark sent them back to Mason under separate guard; Coke was never seen again. Johnson, one of the survivors of the February 1875 lynching, is said to have shot a man named Miller, reportedly the last person to have been seen with Coke; Johnson then fled the county. Clark was later investigated regarding the Coke incident, but the case against him could not be proven; he subsequently left Mason. Meanwhile, Major Jones and his rangers continued to search for Cooley and his followers without success and with little cooperation from the

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Bush, Wanda May Harper

1949

Wanda Harper Bush, the most decorated cowgirl in the history of the Women's Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA), was born to Alvin and Gussie (Martin) Harper on October 6, 1931, in Mason County, Texas. Wanda helped around the family's ranch and rode horses. When she was eight, her brother, Alvin Clarence "A.C.," was born. At a young age, she learned rodeo skills by roping and tying goats. After Wanda progressed from goats to calves, she began competing in rodeos . Before she graduated from Mason High School in the spring of 1949, she became one of the first members of the Girls Rodeo Association (GRA), which later became the WPRA, and held membership card number fourteen. She quickly made a name for herself in rodeo circles and became the all-around GRA champion in 1951, 1952, and 1954. In 1953 she was barrel race champion and came in second in the all-around category. She regularly took the championship title in barrel racing, ribbon and calf roping. Nearly two decades before Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in the famed "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match at the Astrodome ( see SPORTS ), Wanda Harper competed against a man, Pete Taylor of Doole, Texas, in a calf roping contest in San Angelo in 1956 and beat his time by 21.1 seconds. Although a humble woman who focused more on training her horses than media attention about her accomplishments, she appeared on an episode of the television show To Tell the Truth in April 1958. Over her long rodeo career, Wanda competed in barrel racing, cutting, flag racing, calf roping, and ribbon roping. She earned thirty-two world championships and nine all-around titles throughout her career. This made her the most decorated cowgirl in the Women's Professional Rodeo Association's history as of 2017. In 1957 Wanda married Stanley Bush, a cutting horse trainer and later world cutting champion, in Mason County, Texas. The couple competed in rodeos as well as bred and trained horses, many of which became champions, for five decades. Before she married, she trained famous champion quarter horses , Dee Gee, Phoebe Chess, and Flying Eagle, at the Harper family ranch. Then, she and her husband raised and trained their progeny. After their marriage, the couple continued the tradition of training champion mares. Stanley Bush's cutting horse Royal Chess, progeny of Phoebe Chess, was inducted into the National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Fame in 1970. Wanda and Stanley had a daughter, Shanna, on August 14, 1959, who followed in her parents' footsteps when, in 1984, she qualified for the National Finals Rodeo. Wanda not only taught her daughter rodeo skills, she also traveled the country and held skills clinics for young people. In the 1980s Wanda served on the WPRA board as the Texas ProRodeo Circuit director at a crucial point in the WPRA's history. Many of the top rodeos were in Texas. Barrel racers earned less than half the amount of winnings as men in similar events despite having similar costs and fees. Barrel racing was also one of the more popular rodeo events. In 1981 the WPRA began requiring that purse (prize) money for barrel racing events in all rodeos be equal to half the purses offered in men's events and equal purse money for women's events by 1985. Wanda Bush played a crucial role in keeping Texas rodeos in the barrel racing circuit and bringing gender equality to Texas rodeos. Every single Texas rodeo agreed to raise the purse winnings and stay on the circuit, and many credit, at least in part, the respect and clout Wanda had built during her career as a barrel racer in rodeo with this success. She was later honored by the WPRA with the Coca-Cola WPRA Woman of the Year in 1989. After her rodeo career ended, Wanda and Stanley, along with Wanda's brother A. C., continued to train horses on the Harper-Bush Ranch. At eighty-four years old, Wanda Bush died of a heart attack on December 29, 2015. Her service was held at the Mason Funeral Home Chapel, and she was interred in the Ha

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First Comanche-German Meeting

1847

At this site on February 5, 1847, seven or eight Penateka Comanches headed by chief Ketumusua (also Ketumsee, Katemcy, Katemoczy) had their first encounter with an expedition of German immigrants led by John O. Meusebach. The group of about forty settlers left Fredericksburg on January 22 to explore the area between the Llano and Colorado rivers included in the Fisher-Miller land grant. The Society for the Protection of German Immigrants (Adelsverein) had acquired colonization rights to the tract, and Meusebach, the society’s general agent, chose a diplomatic approach to interacting with the people already living here. The Comanches, carrying a white flag, approached the Germans’ camp and asked whether they intended to wage war. Meusebach replied that they had come in peace and presented gifts. After they held a consultation through an interpreter, Ketumusua invited the Germans to visit his village on the San Saba River. The parties had a meal together, and the Comanches escorted the Germans to their camp. This first meeting laid the groundwork for a successful peace council on March 1-2, 1847, a rare instance in American history when native people and immigrant settlers negotiated a voluntary agreement for sharing territory. The Comanches honored their treaty with the Germans even as they continued to be in conflict with other settlers. Ketumusua later became the Principal Chief of the Southern Comanches, and Meusebach was elected to the Texas State Senate. Their first meeting is remembered as a significant exchange between two cultures who added to the intertwined history of the Texas Hill Country.

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Whorlie Well

1875

Named for a victim in famous "Hoodoo War", provoked by cattle rustling in Mason County. John Whorlie (or Worley), a deputy sheriff, on May 13, 1875, lost a prisoner to a lynch mob on Aug. 10, 1875, Whorlie was killed and scalped while working on this well. His killer was identified as Scott Cooley, a friend of the lynched man. Masonic burial for Whorlie was conducted by the McCulloch Lodge No. 273, A. F. & A. M., of which he was a member. No one in Mason County was ever convicted for wrong doing in the "Hoodoo War", but after 1876 law, order, and peace were restored. (1971)

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Things to Do in Mason

historical 0.1 mi away
The Hoo Doo War

The Mason County Hoo Doo War of 1875 was one of the bloodiest feuds in Texas history pitting German settlers against Anglo cattlemen over stolen livestock.…
quirky 0.1 mi away
The Texas Topaz Capital

Mason County is the only place in the world where you can find the official Texas state gem -- blue topaz -- just lying on the ground. Ranchers have been…
quirky 0.1 mi away
The Prohibition Moonshine Hills

During Prohibition the limestone caves and deep ravines around Mason became one of the biggest moonshine operations in Texas. German settlers who had been…
nature 0.1 mi away
Llano Uplift

The Llano Uplift is a hundred-mile circle of Precambrian basement rock pushed up through the younger Hill Country limestone. The pink granite at Enchanted Rock…
historical 0.1 mi away
The German Frontier

Mason was settled by German immigrants in the 1840s who brought their language their Lutheran churches and their absolute refusal to own slaves. They were so…
historical 0.7 mi away
Old Fort Mason and Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee commanded Fort Mason in 1861 just weeks before resigning his U.S. Army commission to join the Confederacy. He wrote agonized letters from this…
quirky 11.7 mi away
The Eckert James River Bat Cave

Every summer evening six million Mexican free-tailed bats pour out of a cave on the James River near Mason in a tornado-shaped column visible from miles away.…
quirky 0.1 mi away
The Lavender Fields of the Hill Country

Mason County has quietly become a lavender-growing region with fields of purple stretching across the limestone hills every June. The rocky soil and brutal…

Sports in Mason

🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 2A · Football · 2018

Mason Punchers — 2018 UIL 2A Division 1 Football State Champions

Most recent: 44-6 over New Deal · 2018 2A Division 1 final

Mason High School, a Class 2A powerhouse in the heart of Texas, has established a notable football tradition. The Punchers have a state championship to their name, a significant achievement for any program. The community's support for its team is a consistent presence, reflecting the deep roots of high school football in this part of the state.

The Punchers' success on the field brings a distinct energy to Mason. While no specific alumni have gone on to professional or major college careers from the provided information, the program's championship season remains a point of pride, showcasing the dedication and effort put forth by its student-athletes year after year.

State titles
2018
Most recent
2018, 44-6
Class
2A
The moment

The 2018 2A Division 1 State Championship saw Mason triumph over New Deal with a final score of 44-6.

Sources: Wikipedia · UIL State Championship Archives · SI High School (ScoreBook Live)

Everything Near Mason

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

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