Category Archives: Wayback Machine

This section of the Coupland Times is about local history . . . the people and places of the past that should be remembered and celebrated or memorialized.

The Coupland Times is in Archive Status

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Ever since I moved away from Coupland, with the exception of a few months in 2015, I have maintained this website. As I approach the three year anniversary of my exit from Coupland on May 1, 2015, I feel it necessary to have some closure with regard to this endeavor. In its heyday, a good percentage of Coupland residents were regular readers. I had a lot of positive feedback and I enjoyed working on it.

However, with the growth of Facebook and the advent of the “Nextdoor” website, some of the original purposes of The Coupland Times are now being met through other means. Nevertheless, it seemed a shame to just let it go, especially because of the stories about the history of Coupland, along with stories about interesting places and people.

For now, I will continue to maintain The Coupland Times as an archive of those stories. Some links may no longer work but the stories and most of the images remain.

If anyone with ties to Coupland wants to submit a story, preferably with an image, I can easily do that on their behalf. Go to “Contact the Publisher” to make a request and I will follow-up by email.

Stewart Dale Spencer

Coupland – 50 Years Ago by Max Marasco

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BACKGROUND ON PHOTO:

In the early afternoon of 7 March 1965, I rented a Cessna 150 from the Longhorn Flying Club at the Austin Mueller Airport to fly around the local Coupland area and asked Kenny Gerschbeck, a good friend from high school days, if he wanted to ride along, which he did.

As I recall, when this photo was taken, we were flying in a westerly direction (note the Cessna 150’s high wing strut in the photo’s upper left hand corner) at around 1500 ft MSL when Kenny took the photo out of the right side window of the airplane. North is to the upper right corner of the photo. I do not recall what type of camera Kenny used but it was probably a Kodak Instamatic. The photo in this story is a scanned copy of that photo.

To help make sense of the photo and not clutter it up with notations, I have included (below) a hand drawn map of Coupland on that day. In 1965, the current “911” addresses had not yet been assigned; although no one used street names back then, those used below are from the original town plat and are the same as used today by 911.

COUPLAND, CIRCA 1965:

In that light, I’d like to call your attention to some of what you are looking at in the photo. Perhaps the first thing you may notice is that the west end of Hoxie St terminates at Austin St — no Stock Up, no Hoxie St access to TX 95, no Post Office building, etc. Also, Broad St “stops” at Elliot St — at that time, kids living less than (as I remember) 2 miles from the school were not entitled to bus service, so had to walk or be otherwise taken to school. You will notice a N-S path from the corner of Elliot and Broad to the school grounds that was maintained by the school board for the “town kids” use. Before TX 95 bypassed Coupland, Commerce and Herrin Streets were part of TX 95 and the footpath was used to keep the kids away from/off TX 95 and was kept in use after the bypass was completed. You will also notice that the current houses in that “Muery Addition” are non-existent. The house just north of the school was the school principal’s residence – at one time, the house was provided “in-kind” as part of the principal’s salary. I don’t recall when the school board sold the property.

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1910 Coupland, Texas postal card from Rev Krebs of the Lutheran Church

Saving the Old Iron Brushy Creek Bridge on CR 456

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Submitted by Karen Marosko:

The truly historical iron bridge crossing Brushy Creek on CR 456 has been closed due to safety concerns. The state and Williamson County are studying whether to repair and put it back in service or tear it down and replace it with a new bridge. With the long wonderful history of this good old bridge in this Coupland area, it would be a shame to not have it put back in service. The bridge was completely renovated in 2006 with additional repairs in 2008 and in 2013 a completely new bridge flooring was installed. So, there has been recent substantial investment in preserving and maintaining the bridge. We need to keep this bridge in service and not unnecessarily spend massive extra tax dollars building a new bridge.

The bridge, originally built in 1912 by the now famous Brown and Root Company, goes back many generations of friends and neighbors who have spent time standing on that bridge, as a youngster or elder, looking at Brushy Creek. Once this type of truss bridge was very common but now, according to the Texas Department of Transportation’s culture resources department, as of 2008 there were only 21 such bridges remaining in all of Texas. With very few people living on CR 456 and so very little daily traffic on the road as welI, it is hoped that by writing a letter to the Williamson County Commissioner’s Court and the Williamson County Historical Commission asking for their support, and enclosing a petition showing broad positive community interest, we can obtain their help once again to save our rare local beauty. They both were of great help in preserving the bridge back in 2006 when it was renovated and hopefully they can do so again now. The bridge “begs” to be kept in daily service.

To try to make this happen, we are asking for your help. Please send an email with your thought(s) such as: “Please repair the historical iron bridge over Brushy Creek on CR 456 and return it to service.” Any other comments you desire to include would be most welcome. Send your email to: {This email is obscured. Your must have javascript enabled to see it}. We will assemble all the petition comments and include them with the appeal letter.

Together we can help maintain history here in the Coupland area.