LLANO RAILYARD

lano received what would be its first and, to date, its last set of railroad tracks by 1892 courtesy of the Austin and Northwestern Railroad. At the time, Llano was experiencing a period of significant growth due primarily to the discovery of iron deposits in the northwestern portion of Llano County. The Austin and Northwestern, carrier of close to sixteen thousand carloads of the granite used to construct the state’s Capitol building in Austin, built an extension to Llano, hoping to prosper from the transport of Llano’s newfound resource. But iron deposits never quite reach commercially-viable amounts, thus ending the boom and limiting the railroad company’s interest in the community, sending investors’ hopes up in flames; a fate of many of the upstart, boom time Llano businesses as well and to such a suspiciously frequent degree that the town was refused fire insurance over several succeeding years. Fire also consumed Llano’s original train depot long afterward, in 1961, but forty five years later Llano citizens revived the depot, erecting the current building in order to house the Llano Visitor Center, the Chamber of Commerce, and, appropriately, the Railroad Museum.