Fort Croghan Plaza of Honor to be dedicated to Burnet County history advocates
The Fort Croghan Museum and Grounds in Burnet connects the past with the present and the future. The Burnet County Heritage Society, which manages the fort and museum, is creating a Plaza of Honor at the facility to recognize people who have helped in any manner to promote local county history. File photo
EDITOR DANIEL CLIFTON
Carol Anne Goble loved history, particularly that of Burnet County and Fort Croghan, and she was an ardent advocate of both.
When she died earlier this year, the Burnet County Heritage Society wanted to memorialize her.
Enter, the Plaza of Honor, which will be installed at the Fort Croghan Grounds and Museum in Burnet.
“After the death of Carol Goble, we did a lot of discussing about how we wanted to honor her,” said Cheryl Henderson, a member of the society’s long-range planning committe. “The committee, we came up with three options: a granite bench, a tree, but we also talked about a paving stone plaza.”
When the committee presented those ideas to the entire Burnet County Heritage Society, members chose all three but decided to open the plaza to others with a love of Fort Croghan and Burnet County history.
Goble passed away on January 8, 2019. She was born and raised in Burnet County but spent about 30 years traveling and raising her eight children as her husband, Bille Joe Goble, served in the U.S. Marine Corps. After he retired, the couple returned to Burnet County in 1970.
Carol Goble operated several businesses in Burnet County, but she also worked tirelessly to collect, preserve, and share the area’s history. She had been a member of the Burnet County Historical Commission since 1987 and joined the Burnet County Heritage Society in 1986. The society manages and runs the Fort Croghan Museum and Grounds, 703 Buchanan Drive.
The society is dedicating a granite bench and a white oak tree in Goble’s memory at the fort. Those two memorials will be part of the overall Plaza of Honor. People can purchase brick pavers for $100 each to dedicate to someone who had some part in the history of the fort or Burnet County, helped promote either, or simply had an interest in them.
Each brick is 4 inches by 8 inches and has room for three lines with up to 16 characters per line.
The society has a specific design for the plaza. The plan calls for a frame of 256 gray bricks with no names on them. Then, there will be 320 bricks inside the frame that are available for dedications.
This section will frame in a smaller area of 40 bricks, which will have the names of the people who were at Fort Croghan when it was commissioned in 1849.
At the center, the Burnet County Heritage Society will place its logo, featuring an 1849 Dragoon, etched onto a 32-inch-by-32-inch piece of granite.
The society is taking orders for the bricks. Order forms are available at the fort; the Burnet Chamber of Commerce, 101 N. Pierce St. in Burnet, the Herman Brown Free Library, 101 E. Washington St. in Burnet; the Joann Cole Mitte Memorial Library, 170 N. Gabriel St. in Bertram; the Marble Falls Public Library, 101 Main St. in Marble Falls; and the Fort Croghan Museum and Grounds Facebook page.
The plaza reinforces the Fort Croghan Museum and Grounds’ motto of “connecting the past to the present and the future” and the Burnet County Heritage Society’s mission to “preserve and promote Burnet County history.”
“It’s not just for the people who lived here all their life. It’s even for the new Burnet County citizen,” Henderson said. “If you’re interested in Burnet County and Burnet history, it’s anyone who is interested in that mission.”
The completed plaza will be about 12 feet by 12 feet. A brick company and contractor have already been chosen for the project. The hope is to start construction later this year once the bricks are sold with a dedication next spring.
Call Judy Lively at 512-909-9162 for more information on the project or Fort Croghan. Burnet County Heritage Society members also plan to have a booth at Fort Croghan Day on Saturday, October 12, where people can pick up information on the plaza and order bricks.