Hays City

Hays City, about eleven miles northwest of San Marcos on the road between Kyle and Wimberley, was perhaps the most ambitious failure in Hays County history. The community was a proposed replacement for San Marcos as the county seat and was laid out in 1908 on land owned by county-center advocate Hezekiah Williams. Within two years Hays City could boast of everything-a two-story hotel, a department store, a livery stable, a lumberyard, a church, and even a weekly newspaper (the Hays City Enterprise)-except settlers. In 1909 Williams went so far as to chart a rail route from Kyle to Hays City, but the town never attracted enough settlers to take on a life of its own, nor even to open a post office. Williams's petition for an election to make Hays City the county seat apparently failed, as did eventually all of his enterprises.