Locating the Deer Creek Fight in Blanco County (original) (raw)

One of the cardinal events in the history of Blanco County, Texas, was the skirmish between marauding Native Americans1 and Blanco County pioneer settlers. The battle occurred on August 13, 1872, but no historical marker currently documents the event and there appears to be some confusion over the actual location of the fight. Texas historian Mike Cox has speculated the event occurred near the intersection of State Highway 71 and Deer Creek in Burnet County,2 and Texas Ranger historian Bob Alexander places the fight at the Deer Creek near Kingsland in Llano County.3 After deeper historical research, it is the intent of this article to fix the location of the Deer Creek Fight squarely in the center of Blanco County. It is not the intent of this article to rewrite the history of that event, which has been better recorded by numerous other sources. The location of the headwaters of the Deer Creek headwaters, in Blanco County, from the Lower Colorado River Authority Hydromet map.