Growth is something we think we understand. In the Texas Hill Country, we see it nowadays in the form of development—old ranches and farmland giving way to new houses and roads. It’s a process that logically should only work one way. Communities grow into towns, which boom into cities. We think of the open spaces in between as places that are yet to be settled; their development belongs to the future.

Spicewood is one of those places. As far as most people are concerned, there is no such place as Spicewood. It is just a word that describes the open space between Marble Falls and Bee Cave. One day, most people assume, as development creeps in from either side, there will be a real town of Spicewood.

Those people are right, but only to a point. Spicewood is becoming a real town—again.

Spicewood was already a settled community by Civil War times. By the turn of the 19th century, it was the largest of the 10 settlements marking the countryside between Marble Falls and the Pedernales River. The Spicewood schoolhouse was deeded and built in 1907, and for more than 40 years local children were educated there. In 1946, however, Highway 71 was completed, making the trip into the city of Marble Falls a much easier one. Within a few years, local children were taking the long bus ride every day to attend school in Marble Falls, and in 1949 the Spicewood schoolhouse was closed. Local families followed suit. Those who did not actually move to town found themselves doing more of their business there. The general stores that once served Spicewood closed, and the town of Spicewood itself almost ceased to be.

Though the old schoolhouse stood vacant, another relic of old Spicewood kept its doors open. The Spicewood Baptist Church was constituted in early 1908, on the same four-acre tract of land gifted by the J. B. Pangle family for the foundation of the Spicewood community’s school and churches. Although the church building itself was not completed until the winter ...

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