Fire and Shifting Ground Kept Hays County Rebuilding

Hays County's first courthouse was not built as a courthouse at all. Settlers put up a log cabin in 1847 for church and school. It began with a dirt floor, later gained split-log flooring, and became the county's courtroom after Hays County was created in 1848. Courts met there until 1861.

By then, San Marcos had a donated courthouse square. Money from a forfeited $2,000 criminal bond helped the county build a two-story frame courthouse there in 1861. That building burned in 1868. Its 1871 replacement used soft local limestone, but shifting ground damaged it badly enough that the county tore it down in 1881.

A harder-limestone courthouse designed by F.E. Ruffini followed in 1882 and 1883. Fire took its top story on February 28, 1908, and the rest came down. C.H. Page and Brother designed the courthouse standing now. The county accepted it on December 13, 1909.

That succession makes the square easier to read. The present courthouse is not simply an old government building; it is the answer to decades of improvised rooms, fire, unstable stone, and rebuilding. Hays County Commissioners Court still holds its weekly sessions there.