A mystery: an aerial photograph of Kerrville

The mystery photo -- with some clues.
Click on any image to enlarge.

One type of mystery puzzles I enjoy trying to solve is figuring out when a photograph was taken, searching the image for clues.

This week I ran across a photograph with many clues, which helped me narrow down the date when the photograph was taken – to within a few months.

The first clue is simple – who took the photo?

Fortunately, this photograph pairs with another in my collection – which was taken just a few moments before. That photograph was labeled with the photographer’s name: A. C. Jorns.

Albert C. Jorns (1890-1984) took photographs of Kerrville from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s. He moved to Kerrville in 1952.

Sid Peterson Memorial Hospital

Sometimes figuring out the date of a photograph means looking at what’s in a photograph. In this aerial image of downtown Kerrville, one of the first things you see is the old Sid Peterson Memorial Hospital, at the corner of Water and Sidney Baker streets. Since the hospital was dedicated in 1949, this photograph cannot be older than that date.

Louise Hays Park can also be seen, so we’ve shaved off a year; Louise Hays Park was built in 1950.

And since Mr. Jorns didn’t arrive here until 1952, the photograph was taken after that date.

The next step is to look for what is not shown in the photo, which sounds impossible, but it will help us figure out the date the photograph was taken.

Louis Schreiner house

Looking carefully, I noticed just before the bend in Water Street, where it meets Clay Street, there’s a large house, which was originally Louis Schreiner’s house. It was torn down in 1967 – to build the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library. That means this photograph was taken before 1967. What’s missing from this photograph? Our big, round library!

A fifteen-year gap (1952 to 1967) might be good enough for some folks – but not for us!

What else might be missing?

When I was a little boy, I remember getting my hair cut at Randy Follis’s barber shop in the Town Plaza shopping center, in the 400 block of Main Street. From our print shop, I passed by Louis Burton’s Insurance office on the corner of the center, facing the intersection of Quinlan and Main streets, passing under the big conifer tree just outside his window. The center also had Town Plaza Fine Meats, and Kerrville’s second Winn’s Variety Store.

J. L. Pampell home

Today the building is the home of Cartewheel’s Catering and Carte & Co., along with Little Caesar’s pizza, plus several other businesses. It’s the pizza restaurant which takes up the space where Burton’s Insurance and Randy’s Barber Shop used to be.

The aerial photograph shows the old tree – which was planted by Milton Pampell’s maternal grandfather, August Braeutigam, the year Milton was born, 1898. The old J. L. Pampell home can also be seen in the aerial photograph, at the corner of Main and Quinlan streets.

What’s missing in the aerial photograph is the Town Plaza Shopping Center building. Since that building was completed in 1964, our photograph was taken before then.

Hill Country Federal Savings & Loan

Diagonally across Main Street, another building is missing – a structure which started life as the Hill Country Federal Savings & Loan, at 500 Main Street. Today it is home to a branch of the Kerr County Federal Credit Union. That building came along the same year as I – 1961.

Now we’re down to just an eleven-year gap. I checked dozens of other clues in the photograph – businesses shown which no longer exist; buildings which are here today, but are not shown in the photograph.

Honestly, I ran into a lot of clues outside our eleven-year gap, either earlier or later.

On a whim, I entered the search terms “Jorns” and “aerial” into the newspaper search engine I use.

Another Jorns photo, showing
water skiers in downtown Kerrville

And there it was, on the front page of the June 8, 1958 issue of the Kerrville Times. “Queen City of the Hill Country: Kerrville,” the caption reads.

I can tell the photograph was taken earlier than June, however. There is a ski boat zooming through the water at the Louise Hays Park – and while it might have been warm enough to swim the day the photograph was taken, the cypress trees along the river bank have yet to sprout their new needles. Cypress trees wait until early spring to put on their new needles, so this photo was taken before springtime, 1958.

I hope you enjoyed solving the mystery!

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who enjoys history mysteries. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times December 10, 2022.

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