Pioneering history: In Marble Falls, tales of a legendary mayor, a museum and those pies

MARBLE FALLS, Texas — A proposed Think, Texas column about a day trip to Burnet County swiftly grew into three separate columns, so fascinating were the historic towns of Marble Falls, Burnet and Bertram — and the people who live there. Today, we look at Marble Falls.

Located about an hour northwest of Austin, Burnet County, while still mostly rural, is growing swiftly.

The largest town, Marble Falls, rises sharply above Lake Marble Falls near the southern rim of the county. Tourists discovered it long before the Colorado River was impounded in 1951 by the Marble Falls Dam, later renamed Max Starcke Dam after the longtime director of the Lower Colorado River Authority.

It replaced the 40-year-old, incomplete Alexander Dam, located a short distance upstream, and a smaller dam that provided power for a textile plant in Marble Falls. (The book to read is "The Untold Story of the Lower Colorado River Authority" by John Williams.)

The town was founded in the 1880s by Confederate Gen. Adam Johnson, who was blinded during the Civil War. He was not directly related to "that other Johnson," I was reminded several times during my day trip. That's how locals referred to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was born not far away in Blanco County.

In the narrows of the Colorado River, the general planned an industrial paradise powered by rushing water from the 22-foot-deep, 250-foot-wide natural falls.

In the early 1880s, a nearby outcropping known as Granite Mountain — now hardly mountainous, but still producing beautiful granite today — was chosen as the source for the pink stones that face the Texas state Capitol. A rail line from Austin that had already reached the cotton town of Bertram and the county seat of Burnet was extended to Marble Falls to service the quarry. (The Cedar Park-based Austin Steam Train Association has produced a dandy rail history of the region titled "Along the Granite and Iron Route.")

So were the town's titular falls, then, marble or granite?

Neither. The town was named for a shelf of light-colored limestone that runs diagonally across the river bottom.

Marble Falls remembers pioneering mayor Ophelia 'Birdie' Crosby Harwood

One of the subjects that drew me to Marble Falls was the story of Ophelia "Birdie" Crosby Harwood.

In 1917 — three years before the 19th Amendment legally guaranteed a woman's right to vote — an all-male electorate chose Harwood as mayor.

I learned more about Harwood at the Falls on the Colorado Museum, originally a two-story stone school built as Falls Alliance University in 1891. There, I heard lively stories from several local historians. The museum houses Harwood's saddle, an early 20th-century dress of hers and other personal effects.

As mayor, Harwood delivered on a promise of transparency in government by circulating the city’s budget twice a year. She approved a new road from Marble Falls to Austin, and helped enact traffic laws in an era without stop signs or other traffic signals. She also promised to fence in the loose livestock and clear the town streets of drunkards.

"She wanted sidewalks," says her great-granddaughter, Sarah Ann Harwood Will. "Apparently they wouldn't build sidewalks. Her slogan was 'a bigger town, a better town, a cleaner town and a more progressive town.'"

Harwood was part of a nationwide "good government" movement during the early 20th century that produced progressives in both dominant political parties, including presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

"As candidate for mayor, I have the endorsement of our president," Harwood proclaimed, "and every broad-minded citizen all over the state, Marble Falls included."

Marble Falls has not forgotten. A new conference center hotel in this Hill Country town will soon be named Ophelia Hotel Marble Falls in Harwood's honor.

Harwood, who grew up on her family's ranch in Blanco County, was small in stature. Reputedly, she learned to ride horses before she could walk. In adult life, she was pictured riding sidesaddle and wearing a tall riding hat.

When she met George Hill Harwood, an Englishman who had studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, she tested his Texas frontier toughness by handing him a large but non-poisonous snake to handle. Harwood, who came from a long line of very proper physicians, passed her stress test. After they married, she served as his assistant.

Dr. Harwood delivered the newborn LBJ in 1908, and his wife encouraged the bright boy. She gave him a microscope and then later helped launch his political career.

"She was a very forceful woman," Will says. "A very small woman with a huge personality."

While "Birdie" led a successful public life, she raised four boys, and her family remembers her cooking, especially channel catfish from the Colorado River, her beautiful rock garden, and socializing under a big oak in her yard. She also could be a stern moralist.

"Frequently, in the early mornings, we would be summoned to her bedroom for a 'lecture,'" granddaughter Nell Harwood Holmes recalls in a brief typewritten memoir. "She had a shocking remonstrance for the girls: 'Don't you ever let some man take advantage of you — or your dad will have to kill him."

Blue Bonnet Cafe: A Texas diner like none other

Like other tourists, out-of-town journalists can't get enough of the Blue Bonnet Cafe, regularly picked as one of the state's finest diners by magazine and newspaper writers and editors. It's easy to tell why.

The cafe opened in 1929 on Main Street — now the bustling and walkable center of town that includes nearby wineries and breweries. In 1946, the diner moved a few blocks southeast to a high spot on U.S. 281. That highway now carries more than its historical share of traffic, since travelers include it as part of a back route from Dallas-Fort Worth to San Antonio, and in doing so, they avoid Interstate 35.

"The cafe has had five or six owners," says Dave Plante, current co-owner, along with the Kemper family, which includes his wife, Lindsay Kemper Plante. "Don Bridges had it from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. John Kemper, Lindsay's dad, used to eat breakfast here every day. Don just wore him down until he sold it to him in 1981."

Each generation has agreed to keep what works. For as long as anyone can remember, the pot roast and chicken-fried steak dishes have been the top sellers.

"We added a club sandwich in 2010," Plante says with a smile about a rare menu update. "Our chicken livers have a cult-like following. We've had a hard time sourcing them recently. Processors are now discarding them; and then there's the avian flu. We try to explain that to our regular customers."

A recognizable crowd of locals drops by early in the morning, before the tourists filter in. At that early hour, LBJ often gathered local politicos in a backroom that now is open to the main dining area, along with a big, bright room added in 2000.

"They want consistency," Plante says of his customers. "The food must look the same, smell the same, and taste the same."

The owners can count on their staff to please those customers. Whole families work here. The longest tenured employee has served for 40 years; several others for 25 years or more.

The tourists often ask: "Whatever happened to that place with the rattlesnakes?"

For years, Burnham Brothers Sporting Goods stood across the highway. That family was noted for inventing and improving a popular game-calling device. Yet kids remembered the snakes, originally gathered at the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, that slithered around an enclosure behind the front window, sometimes striking at onlookers through the broad pane of glass. The store moved to a larger location before closing.

It's time to talk about Blue Bonnet's famous pies.

"The most popular are coconut cream, chocolate cream and lemon meringue," Plante says. "But my favorite is a peanut butter cream with chocolate sauce drizzled on top. Tastes like a Reese's peanut butter cup."

You can't leave the Blue Bonnet Cafe without ordering pie, so I opted for Plante's choice. It's a keeper.

"We sell 3,500 whole pies during Thanksgiving week," says Dave Plante. "They are all baked on site. Get your order in by Halloween."

A Black history museum is on its way

Black history can be found in just about any Texas town. In Marble Falls, I was lucky enough to meet Jane Knapik, who sits on the Burnet County Historical Commission, at the Falls on the Colorado Museum. She handed me a packet of materials about St. Frederick Baptist Church, which which was founded in 1893 by Dicey Yett.

I immediately wanted to know more.

The historically Black flock has assembled at its current church structure at 301 Avenue N for more than 30 years and operates a thrice-weekly soup kitchen. The Rev. George Perry Sr. serves as pastor. He backs the initiative to build a Black history museum on the church grounds.

Church administrator Bessie Jackson, originally from Dallas, told The Highlander newspaper in July that the venue would foreground the accomplishments of African Americans throughout the Highland Lakes region.

"Born in slavery in the nearby Spicewood area, Dicey married Green Johnson in 1870," Knapik writes in a short 2014 history of the congregation. "Later, the Johnsons and several of their nine children moved into Marble Falls to live in a small structure behind the Roper Hotel, where Dicey was employed. So it was there, more than 120 years ago, a group of worshipers met in Dicey's small home and started St. Frederick Baptist Church."

Several Marble Falls structures served as the church, part of the St. John Regular Baptist Association, and its accompanying school for the congregation. The Black population of Marble Falls at one time lived primarily in the northeast section of town, then moved to the southwest part of town. Several of them, including Dicey and Green Johnson, are buried in an African American cemetery near Double Horn, southeast of Marble Falls.

Jackson believes that the proposed museum, which has already attracted gifts from other area congregations, will serve as a voice for those whose history has not yet been told.

"Right is right," Jackson told The Picayune magazine. "We're all part of this community, and we need to work together."

Dean Man's Hole a sad Civil War reminder

A darker strain of Burnet County's history swirls around Dead Man's Hole, which almost everybody I met on my trip mentioned. Some even counted ancestors among those whose bodies were dumped there during a Hill Country war of terror that pitted Confederate militants against Union sympathizers.

The small well-like cavern can be viewed off County Road 401 above Texas 71 before it intersects with U.S. 281. That is, if you catch a glimpse of the small "401" street sign before battalions of construction trucks rumble up behind you.

It was discovered in 1821 by entomologist Ferdinand Lueders and gained notoriety during the Civil War.

Texas history, delivered to your inbox
Click to sign up for Think, Texas, a newsletter delivered every Tuesday

By way of background, Burnet County, along with nearby Travis, Williamson, Blanco and Bastrop counties, were among the 18 that voted against secession in 1861. Many of the dissenters were German Americans, but some of the Hill Country folk had migrated from Appalachia and resisted Confederate authority. In fact, some anti-Confederate "cedar choppers" held out in Bull Creek Canyon west of Austin throughout the war.

According to several sources in Burnet County, an oak branch hung over the entrance of the cave. Union sympathizers, including a judge, were tied to the branch, then dumped into the hole.

"The remains of several bodies were recovered from the cave in the late 1860s, but the presence of gas prevented extensive exploration," reports the Handbook of Texas Online. "The gas evidently dissipated over time, for in 1951 a group of spelunkers from the University of Texas successfully descended the hole."

Owner Ona Lou Roper deeded Dead Man’s Hole and its surrounding 6.5 acres as a park to Burnet County in 1999.

Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached at mbarnes@statesman.com.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Going Marble Falls, Texas: Learn about history and leave room for pie