Hye

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Promotion: Nearby Map of Blanco County, Texas

Hye is on U.S. Highway 290 near the Gillespie county line ten miles west of Johnson City in western Blanco County. Whites settled the area in 1860 when a number of farming and ranching families moved to Rocky Creek, three miles east of the site of present Hye. Rocky, as this area of settlement came to be called, continued to grow steadily throughout the 1860s and 1870s with the influx of both German and Anglo settlers. In 1880 Hiram G. (Hye) Brown, for whom the community was later named, built a small store and house south of the Pedernales River on the Austin-Fredericksburg road at the location of present Hye. Brown had come with his parents to Rocky eight years earlier. In 1886 he established a post office at Hye, which he operated as part of his general store. After the post office came in, other businesses were begun in the area, including a gristmill and a blacksmith shop. In 1906 a cotton gin was erected at Hye, and it continued to operate until 1945. In 1904 Brown built a new structure to house the post office and his business on the south side of the road just opposite its old location. This building, the Hye General Store and Post Office, which in 1966 was entered in the state archives as a Recorded Texas Historical Landmark, still stands today and continues to serve its original function. Hye gained particular attention in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson used the front porch of the post office as the setting for his appointment of Lawrence F. O'Brien as United States Postmaster General. Johnson, whose boyhood home is nearby, also claimed to have mailed his first letter at the age of four from the Hye post office. The population of Hye was estimated at 200 during the 1920s and 1930s. It dropped to fifty during World War II and then climbed gradually from ninety in 1947 to a postwar high of 140 in 1968. From 1970 to 2000 it was estimated at 105.

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Richard Bruhn | © TSHA

Handbook of Texas Logo

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.

Belongs to

Hye is part of or belongs to the following places:

Currently Exists

Yes

Place type

Hye is classified as a Town

Associated Names

  • (Rocky)

Location

Latitude: 30.24242440
Longitude: -98.57002900

Has Post Office

Yes

Is Incorporated

No

Population Count, 2009

72