Blowout Community, Texas
The Blowout community was a settlement along Comanche Creek in Blanco County, fifteen miles northwest of Johnson City. It was the first settlement in the area
when it was founded in 1854. The name "Blowout" comes from a nearby
cave that exploded when lightning struck and ignited gases in the cave. Today,
Blowout is a virtual ghost town.
The Blowout community is a settlement in northwestern Blanco
County, fifteen miles northwest of Johnson
City. Today it is a virtual ghost town and little
remains at the site other than scattered ranches and isolated ranch houses on
the rocky hills along Comanche Creek.
In 1854, a group of about two dozen homesteaders from Kentucky
settled in the blowout area on the east side of Comanche Creek near Comanche Spring
and founded the Blowout community. The location of the original settlement,
which was the first in the area, was approximately three miles below the origin
of Comanche Creek. Subsequently, as more
settlers moved into the area, the Blowout community spread along the creek, upstream
from the spring.
The name “Blowout” came from Blowout Cave, which is located
in a hillside 1.5 kilometers southwest of Comanche Spring, on the east side of
Comanche Creek. The cave was dissolved out of the limestone over millennia by
running ground water, and it was at one time the site of springs similar to
Comanche Spring. Blowout cave has been
home to millions of bats for thousands of years, and a great deposit of guano
accumulated in the cave over the years. A tradition relating to how Blowout
Cave got its name was related by Arthur
Pressler, a rancher in the Blowout area. It seems
that the ammonia and other gases from the decomposing guano in the cave, which
had built up over thousands of years, was ignited when lightning struck at the
cave mouth, and the gases exploded. While this explanation may seem fanciful, bat
guano was a significant a source of nitrates for the manufacture of gunpowder in
the 1800’s and before.
Compiled from various sources by
Joe Cooper
Kendall County,
Texas
August
23, 2009
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REFERENCES
·
RootsWeb.com, Blowout, http://www.rootsweb.com/~txblanco/communities.htm
·
Handbook of Texas
Online, s.v. "Blowout Community, Texas,"
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/hvbbl.html
(accessed August 23, 2009).
·
Gunnar M. Brune, Springs of Texas, (Texas A&M
University Agriculture Series, 5, 1981), 77. http://books.google.com/books?id=bvJ6gjatcK0C&pg=RA1-PA10&lpg=RA1-PA10&dq=comanche+springs+comal+county&source=bl&ots=W5iPQfeHz-&sig=CzlrenkEO-QTMUTh2a0fPTkUrmM&hl=en&ei=X6aOSr2EPKKNtgeVxZDPBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9#v=onepage&q=comanche%20springs%20comal%20county&f=false
(accessed August 21, 2009).
·
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v.
"Caves," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/rqc3.html
(accessed August 23, 2009).