A new “Welcome to Wimberley” sign greets travelers as they arrive in Wimberley on FM 2325 in what amounts to more than a decade’s worth of efforts to revive the Wimberley tradition in this location.
The process might have been a bit longer than people expected but the final result was worth it.
Keep Wimberley Beautiful put the final touches on the fourth and final “Welcome to Wimberley” sign last week.
Part of the reason for the long process of building the new sign was figuring out a years-long mystery of the disappearance of the original sign.
“When the school district did some rearranging or maybe started the construction on the administration building, it (the original sign) disappeared.” Carol Scheel, president of Keep Wimberley Beautiful said. “It was never to be found again. Since then, for about ten or eleven years, we’ve been talking about replacing that sign.”
Scheel then went to the Wimberley ISD school board to seek their permission to build a new sign since the sign was to be built on school property.
“I went to the school board to talk to the superintendent,” Scheel said. “He got it on an agenda for their board meeting. I felt like we needed a legal document, not just word of mouth… It finally passed on the school board in their May meeting and permission was finally granted.”
Though the process was a little long, not only did Scheel get the green light from the school board but also solved the years-long mystery of the disappearing sign.
“It’s been in the making and the talking stages for years and years,” Scheel said. “Part of the problem was that we tried to have someone find the old sign… the sign essentially fell apart when they took it down and somebody, I don’t know who, threw it away.”
Even though the mystery was solved, there was still a push within the Wimberley Keep Beautiful group to replace the sign.
“Everybody has been pressuring (replacing the sign) for a long time,” Jim Miller said. “One of our members just kept harassing us until we broke down and said ‘Ok we will make a new sign.’ We’ve been working on this for a couple of years now.”
As for designing the sign, the Keep Wimberley Beautiful crew didn’t need to look far.
“Last year, about this time, we replaced the sign down by the bridge on the south side of town when a car wrecked into it,” Miller said. “We made a new sign and repaired the water wheel so we had a feel on what to do and modeled the new sign after the one we had just repaired. It was handy, because we had a model to work off of, which was very helpful with some minor changes but nothing major.”
Both designs of the Welcome to Wimberley signs have been a staple of the community and one that no one wants to get rid of.
“The original design, if you go back through the annals of history, was made I think by Dan Grace who was a local carpenter back in the late 70s,” Miller said. “When the sign by the bridge was damaged, we set out a poll to get people’s input to see if they wanted to change the sign, because we thought about doing a different design. The big response was ‘No, just keep it like it was, we like the original.’ With that in mind, that is how we came up with the design for the two newer signs.”
Of course with a project like this, Miller wasn’t the only one helping put the sign together.
“There were several moving parts,” Miller said. “We had a contractor do the rock work. We also had dirt delivered and a contractor who helped load and spread the dirt out. We also had an individual, Karl Akers, who made the wheel. For the sign itself we picked up some cedar boards which were carved at Sign Crafters in San Marcos while also having another contractor put in the posts to receive all of this. Then I and some of Santa’s Helpers went out and put all the pieces together the other morning.”
If you want to be involved with Keep Wimberley Beautiful visit their Facebook page.
