Hays County began with a borrowed courtroom

When Hays County was created in 1848, it did not yet have a courthouse. A log building raised the year before for church and school took on a third job: county courtroom. It had begun with a dirt floor, and county and district courts kept meeting there until 1861.

The county was cut from Travis County and named for John Coffee Hays, the Texas Ranger captain whose frontier service made his name familiar across the region. San Marcos remained the county seat as the boundaries changed and the courthouse moved from the borrowed cabin to its own square.

That beginning fits Hays County unusually well. Government, school, church, and a stage stop all gathered around one rough building before the railroad towns and fast-growing corridor arrived.