Burnet: The Pink Granite That Built the Capitol

Burnet has been the seat of Burnet County since eighteen fifty-two, and the Hill Country around it is rich in geology. The most consequential stone nearby is Sunset Red granite, quarried from Granite Mountain one mile west of the neighboring town of Marble Falls. When the state accepted an offer of free native granite for the new Texas State Capitol in the early eighteen eighties, it was Burnet County's mountain that answered the call.

Contractors built a narrow-gauge railroad from the quarry to Burnet to handle the material. More than one thousand eight hundred rail carloads, totaling thirty-one thousand tons, shipped south to Austin. The result, completed in eighteen eighty-eight, is the largest state capitol building by square footage in the United States, built entirely from the pink stone of these hills.