Pipe Creek

The Pipe Creek community is on State Highway 16 about nine miles east of Bandera in eastern Bandera County. The town was founded about 1870 and was named for nearby Pipe Creek. The first settler of the community, Francis Marion Hodges, arrived in the area in 1868, and another settler, Oliver S. Shirley, arrived in 1870. In the town's first decade, about seventy families moved into the area. Early families included the Scotts, Andersons, Newcomers, Vawters, and Morgensterns. A post office called Pipe Creek opened in 1873, with A. M. Beekman as postmaster; after 1895 the post office name was reportedly changed to Pipecreek for a time. During the 1870s Mrs. Marion Hodges opened the first store; W. J. Hamilton opened the second. By the early 1880s a cotton gin and a gristmill were operating in the town, which had grown to about 100 residents. Its population consisted mostly of farmers and ranchers, who raised cotton, corn, cattle, and sheep, and also produced molasses. Stagecoaches from San Antonio to Bandera provided travel and mail services. The first public school for Pipe Creek was built in 1881 near the Pipe Creek Cemetery. In 1886 the local First Baptist Church was organized, with Baptists as well as other religious denominations meeting in the schoolhouse.