The Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce began almost 90 years ago.

For the past several months, I've been writing a series of columns on the history of our community. Lately I've been talking about Kerr County's "Golden Era," a period of time from about 1869 to 1927, when so many of the institutions we value began.
Take, for example, the Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce, the area's leading business group. Though it has gone by several different names, including the Kerrville Commercial Club, Kerr Country Chamber of Commerce and even the Kerr County Chamber of Commerce, this group has been instrumental in many developments for our community, and it had its beginnings during the "Golden Era."
Looking through my copy of Matilda Real’s “A History of Kerr County, Texas,” I found some references to the chamber:
“The Chamber of Commerce,” Real writes, “was organized at an early date but was not permanent until May, 1922, when Ally Beitel was elected president.”
The group held “monthly membership meetings, and the organization promoted courtesy and friendliness to visitors, encouraged the buying of home products, sponsored golf tournaments, and aided the jobless during the depression."
But tough economic times caused some to reconsider the necessity of the group.
“On August 30, 1935, the following resolution came before the organization: ‘In view of the fact that Kerrville now has a Junior Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club, Civic League, and other organizations, we feel civic needs [are adequately] cared for and that it would be an unnecessary financial drain on the businessmen of Kerrville to continue and we recommend to discontinue as of September 30, 1935.’ On October 4th, 1935, a special committee composed of W. A. Fawcett, Hal Peterson, Ed Carruth, E Galbraith, E. H. Patton, Wallace Miller, and G. H. Lang recommended that the Chamber of Commerce be continued. Following this recommendation, the Chamber of Commerce was reorganized with W. O. Harwell as secretary-manager of the Kerrville Chamber of Commerce. A new constitution and by-laws were passed to replace the old. There were to be a president and twelve directors. The first president under reorganization was Col. L. H. Webb (1936). The first directors were Roger Adkins, W. C. Bell, A. B. Burton, E. B. Carruth, L. T. Davis, W. C. Fawcett, C. E. Heckler, G. E. Lehmann, Hal Peterson, E. E. Saenger, Scott Schreiner, and Rudolph Stehling.”
Fortunately for our community, the chamber survived the depression and continued serving our community.
Here are some of the successes of the group, from a program celebrating their 75th year:
In the area of tourism, the group can count as accomplishments projects that became the Kerrville Schreiner Park, and the Scott Schreiner Municipal Golf course. Tourism is such an important part of our economy, and the Chamber has been working on tourism related projects since it began in 1922.
Transportation is an area of work that we often take for granted, as we drive our comfortable cars over the hills and across the streams, cruising along in the air-conditioning and listening to the stereo. There was a time, however, when our beautiful hills posed a pretty big problem: you couldn't get here from there. If you couldn't transport people and stuff in and out of our little valley, the town would be strangled by the very topography that lends the area such beauty. The roads that course through the hills didn't just happen, and the Chamber has often been involved in promoting improved highways and roads for Kerr County and Kerrville, from support and maintenance of the Old Spanish Trail back in 1922 to a ribbon cutting out on IH 10 in 1974.
Making a community great takes a lot of work, and often is the result of a thousand small projects that build upon each other like one brick upon another. The Chamber has been involved in early improvements to the local telephone system, funding the County Agents' work years ago, partial funding for the municipal swimming pool (the old Cascade Pool which was in Old Town), support for the creation of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, help with the creation of Louise Hays Park, and countless other projects. In 1985, the Chamber, along with Schreiner University, began Leadership Kerr County, a program to train future leaders of the community by educating them about different aspects of the county through a nine month intensive program. It's a very good program, because it exposes the participants to the problems facing the county, the whole county.
Of course, the purpose of the Chamber is largely economic -- to promote the commercial interests of the community. Some of the achievements that the Chamber can take at least partial credit for are the Fish Hatchery near Mountain Home, Methodist Encampment, the Kerrville State Hospital, Wildlife Management Area, the Veteran's Hospital, the USDA Entomology Labs, the relocation of Mooney Aircraft to Kerrville, the local Regional office of the Parks & Wildlife Department, the founding of the Kerr Economic Development Foundation, and a successful Physician Recruitment program a decade ago.
I'm glad we have the Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce, which, in two years, will be 90 years old.
Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who serves on the board of the Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce.

The Benevolent War Risk Society founded a hospital here.

Since the beginning of the year I've been writing about our community's history, starting with the Prehistoric Era, the Settlers' Era, and now the Golden Era. Of course, I made up the names for these "eras" and arbitrarily set the dates. Others might choose different labels and times. I suppose I was attempting to make patterns and order from the histories I read.
I came across an interesting sentence this week: "Here thousands of soldiers from every war from the Spanish-American on have been attended since the institution was opened as a "Legion Hospital" in 1922." Another source puts the founding date as 1920, and another, 1919. Regardless, what we now know as the Veterans Administration Hospital, just east of Kerrville, had its beginning during the time period I've been calling Kerr County's "Golden Era," from 1869-1927.
For those who don't remember, the Spanish-American War was fought in 1898, a long time ago.
According to the Kerr County Album, "In November, 1919, a group of Kerr County citizens, with the aid of the Benevolent War Risk Society, founded by Texas governor W. P. Hobby, American Legion State Commander Claude Birkhead, and Texas State Health officer Dr. Collins, launced a drive for one half million dollars to construct a hospital in Kerrville for the care of ... veterans. On April 20, 1920, a site consisting of 748 acres was donated by Louis and A. C. Schreiner to the Society. With the aid of this generous donation, construction of the American Legion Tuberculosis Hospital began that same year.
"Before construction was completed, the Society's funds became depleted and the project was sold to the American Legion, Department of Texas, on January 14, 1921 for one dollar. At this time, the name "Legion" was given to the hospital, a name which many Texans call the facility to this day."
In fact, if you look at old maps, there used to be a community name where the hospital stands: between Kerrville and Center Point, you'd find a spot marked "Legion." I vaguely remember the highway signs on Highway 27 giving the distance not only to Center Point, but to Legion as well.
Though it began as a Legion hospital, it was soon operated by the State of Texas, and then by the U. S. Veterans Bureau.
According to Bob Bennett, in his "Kerr County" history, "A site, consisting of several hundred acres of land, was purchased by the Schreiner family from the heirs of Joshua D. Brown and donated for the hospital's establishment. The federal government paid the state $1,052,000 for the property, and the first veteran patients were transferred here from the U. S. Public Health Service Hospital at Houston on July 1, 1923.
"A new building built at a cost of approximately $2 million was dedicated on December 19, 1947. This eight-story structure increased the hospital's capacity from the original 400 beds to approximately 800 beds."
The hospital's mission has changed over the years since its founding, but it remains an important part of our community, and vital to the lives of veterans not only in Kerrville but across the state.
Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who went swimming in the Guadalupe twice this week.

Boy Scouts started in America here

I've been calling the period from about 1869 to 1927 the "Golden Era" of Kerr County's history. The dates, I'll admit, are pretty arbitrary. But the idea is this: during this time so many of our local institutions had their start.
For instance, quite possibly the first Boy Scout troop in America.
Consider these intriguing lines from the Kerr County Album, from a brief history of Kerrville's St. Peter's Episcopal Church:
"In 1908, the Reverend J. E. Ellis came to Kerrville. St. Peter's became a parish although it was not self-supporting. The parish room was built, and in 1910, Mr. Ellis organized the first Boy Scout troop in America."
No other mention in the "Album." That's it. Just enough to kindle the imagination of the reader.
I happened to remember a book my father printed for Merrill Doyle in 1975, an autobiography entitled "Reminiscences of My Youth, and Other Catastrophes." The slim volume has been out of print for many years, but a rare copy occasionally becomes available at Wolfmueller's Books on Earl Garrett Street.
I remember Merrill Doyle as an artist. Indeed, he's the one who painted the mural which graces the second story of the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library, the one depicting the history of our community. I even had the honor of being one of his art students when I was very young.
But I also remembered Doyle was one of the members of that early Boy Scout troop. On a hunch, I looked in the book and found a chapter called "The Boy Scouts Come to Kerrville."
"At about this time our family was living in a rented house back of the Episcopal Church," Doyle writes. "The location of the house brought me in contact with the first Boy Scout troop which was organized in Kerrville at this church. The Rector, a daring man named Ellis had been sent to our fair city from England no doubt as a penance of some sort. The Scouts had been first set up in London in 1907, and he, liking the program, had come to us fully equipped with all available literature."
You might recognize the names of some of the earliest members of the troop: "Howard and Eugene Butt, Doyle Grinstead, Milton Pampell, Jules and Alois Remschel, Frith Everts, and others who I have long since forgotten but I am sure we had a troop long before 1910 when scouting officially came to America."
Howard Butt lent his initials (plus a middle "E" which he possibly supplied himself) to a grocery store chain; Doyle Grinstead's father J. E. Grinstead bought a local newspaper and changed its name to the "Kerrville Mountain Sun," Milton Pampell's father started Pampell's, and the Remschels have a street named after them.
I also enjoyed reading about the troop's early campouts.
"We had a place where we would go for overnight hikes. The site was on Goat Creek just above what is now Camp Arcadia. No mention was ever made of our having permission to camp there but we had established squatters rights and no doubt the landowner was terrified at the thought of retribution if he chose to oust us so we used the site for years. About once a month we would assemble with crude packs and bedrolls at the scout headquarters and proceed to wipe out the intervening few miles by simply placing one foot in front of the other. This was the only transportation we had and it never let us down."
Doyle relates that the troop seldom slept during these overnight adventures, preferring to spend the evening talking and horsing around. "I don't recall what we did during those wakeful nights," he writes, "but it must have been important for the moment because we did it with gusto until about 4 a.m. when we would pull our blankets over us against the chill of the dawn and slip off into a dreamless stupor."
The entire troop remained at the rank of Tenderfoot until one of the scouts discovered the higher levels possible. Several of the scouts, including Doyle, began to work in earnest for the higher ranks, but the paperwork was never sent in. Later in life, when Doyle was an adult, working as a volunteer with Scouting in San Antonio, he turned in his old records and became Kerr County's first Eagle Scout, 40 years after being a member of the original troop.
Boy Scout Troop 1 still exists, and is sponsored by the First Christian Church here in Kerrville.
Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who was once a Boy Scout himself.