Shovel Mountain

Shovel Mountain is six miles south of Marble Falls and three miles west of U.S. Highway 281 in southern Burnet County. The site was settled in the mid-1850s and supposedly received its name shortly after the Civil War when an early settler found a shovel at the summit of a nearby hill. A post office was established at Shovel Mountain in 1869 with Mrs. Ottilie Giesecke as postmistress. The population was estimated at forty in 1884, at sixty in 1890, and at seventy-five in 1892; sheep ranching was the primary occupation of area residents, and wool and cotton were the principal shipments. Around 1900 the community began to decline. The post office was discontinued in 1905, and mail for area residents was sent to Marble Falls. When the school was consolidated with the Marble Falls Independent School District in 1949, the Shovel Mountain community lost its primary focus. The school and a few scattered houses marked the location on county highway maps in the 1940s, but by the 1980s these no longer appeared. The population reached ninety-eight in 2000.