Hays County has a birthday today
On this day in 1848, the state legislature divided up Travis County and created Hays County. Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra will host a celebration of the county’s 171st birthday — along with Texas Independence Day and Mardi Gras — tomorrow morning at 9 on the Hays County Courthouse steps.
According to the Handbook of Texas Online, Hays County was carved out of Travis County. Early Anglo settlers of the area and members of John Coffee Hays’ Texas Rangers company — William Moon, Eli T. Merriman and Mike Sessom — worked with Gen. Edward Burleson, then a member of the Texas Senate, to name the new county after Hays.
After the county’s organization, its population grew rapidly — from 387 people in 1850 to 2,126 in 1860, the Handbook says. In the county’s early history, enslaved people were a primary source of labor, according to the Handbook, and after emancipation the African-American population of Hays County began to decline. By the time the Civil War began, African-Americans made up more than a third of the county population, the Handbook states, but 20 years after the start of the Civil War, less than 20 percent of the county population was African-American. During Reconstruction, a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan formed in Hays County, the Handbook states, and in the 1870s a militia called the San Marcos Greys formed (the Handbook states the group formed in 1876, but the U.S. Army states it formed in 1873 from forces mustered into state service).
Hays County is now home to more than 214,000 people and is one of the fastest growing counties in the country. According to the 2018 Texas Almanac, the county’s racial makeup is about 54 percent Anglo, 4 percent African-American and 39 percent Hispanic. Tourism, retail, healthcare, education, manufacturing and agriculture are among the county’s most important economic sectors, the almanac states. The Greater San Marcos Partnership notes that San Marcos has been named among the best places to retire and best small cities to move to; Kyle is the “Pie Capital of Texas” and its Pie in the Sky event was named a “Cool New Thing to Travel For” by Thrillist; and Dripping Springs is known as the “Wedding Capital of Texas.” And scattered among the main cities in Hays County are wineries, swimming holes, unique shops and shopping centers and industries that are growing as Central Texas becomes a crucial point in the Texas “Innovation Corridor.”
