Granite Mountain's owners gave Texas the stone for its Capitol

The Texas Capitol was first planned with pale limestone. When exposed stone began to discolor, Granite Mountain's owners offered the state its Sunset Red Granite at no charge. The gift solved one problem and created another: moving a mountain's worth of stone to Austin.

A special railroad line reached the quarry near Marble Falls. Trains carried 188,518 cubic feet of granite to the Capitol project. The building's color still makes that Burnet County trip visible from blocks away in Austin.

Local granite came home in another form at the 1937 Burnet County Courthouse. Pink-granite veneer wraps the building, while etched panels show ranching, law, migration, and a hydroelectric dam.

Granite Mountain therefore sits inside two civic stories at once: one stone face for the state, and another for the county that supplied it.