Gideon Thorp's Arrastre

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Marker No: 15914

Aluminum 27 x 42 Subject Marker 

Geographic: ​30° 26.305′ N, 98° 21.073′ W

Location: ​339 Round Mountain Cemetery Rd, Round Mountain

Marker Text: Gideon Cowan Thorp was born in Tennessee in 1844 and had settled in Texas with his family by 1850. The Thorps later moved to Llano County. Gideon served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and returned to the area after the war, relocating to Birdtown (now Round Mountain), Blanco County. Gideon married Sarah E. Bird in 1871 and the Thorps, along with their eight children, lived in the Round Mountain area for forty years.
    The California Gold Rush of the late 1840s possibly helped to fuel rumors of the presence of gold in the Texas Hill Country. However, an 1866 geological report stated that weathered biotite (mica) was the mineral being mistaken for gold in the region. Rumors swirled of gold in the Sandy Creek basin, and in the late 1880s rancher Joel P. Smith "Grubstaked" Gideon Thorp to determine if there was any truth to the rumors. Grubstaking is the act of furnishing gear to a prospector in return for receiving some of the profits from any findings.
    Thorp constructed an arrastre in Walnut Creek. An arrastre is a type of ore-crushing mill first utilized in Texas by the Spanish during the early 18th century. 18th century. Thorp's Arrastre, carved in the creek's hard sandstone bottom, used the creek's water to flush stone through the carved trough, enabling it to be crushed by an animal-drawn mill stone. Thorp and his family lived in a two-room house near the arrastre, but it is not known how much gold - if any was found in Walnut Creek. Thorp died in 1929, but the arrastre remains today as a visible reminder of his hard work and his dreams of "Striking it rich" (2009)