Sage

Sage was on the North Fork of the San Gabriel River at the intersection of the old Burnet-Lampasas road and the old Austin-San Saba road, eight miles northeast of Burnet in north central Burnet County. It may have taken its name from the sage grass in the area. Families from South Carolina, Mississippi, and Kentucky settled there before 1860. A Sage post office was established in 1874 with Jesse G. W. Howard as postmaster. Sage had no school of its own, but it was close enough to Pleasant Hill and Bethel that children from Sage could attend school in one of those communities. In 1884 Sage had three churches, a general store, a steam corn mill and cotton gin, and seventy-five residents; cotton, pecans, wool, and hides were the principal shipments made by area farmers. The post office was discontinued from 1884 to 1898, during which time mail for the community was sent to Sunny Lane. By 1900 Sage had 242 residents. Shortly thereafter, however, the community began to decline, possibly because the Houston and Texas Central Railway bypassed Sage in 1903. The store remained open until about 1918, and the gin operated until 1929; only a few scattered houses marked the community's location on county highway maps by the 1940s, and no evidence of Sage appeared on maps in the 1980s.