The Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country outside of Sattler occupies a limestone shelf that was once a mudflat traversed by dinosaurs some 110 million years ago.
Back then the hills now blanketed with cedars and oaks between New Braunfels and Canyon Lake would have looked much different. The center of Texas roughly west of I-35 was covered by a shallow sea occupied by giants. At some point the land began to crinkle, forming our beloved Hill Country and obscuring the mudflats at different geographic levels.
Fast-forward to the early 1980s when Ken Thayer traded fill dirt to the construction of FM 2673 for leveling of a portion of a hill where he wanted to build an RV park. Fortunately, the road builders only went as deep as the limestone shelf pockmarked with three-toed dinosaur footprints.
For many years Thayer operated the site as a private roadside attraction where he claimed human footprints next to tracks proved man walk with the dinosaurs.
The claim turned out not to be true, but the more than 275 footprints at the site were impressive. One set was made by an acrocanthosaurus, a ferocious carnivorous biped that was a distant relative of T. rex and weighed about the same of a large elephant. The other tracks are from an herbivore iguanodon, a biped much larger than an elephant.
After a series of owners, the Heritage Museum took over the property and expanded it into a multifaceted history depository. The nonprofit group added a roof over the dinosaur trackways protecting the footprints and making it an all-weather exhibit.
The Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country is at 4831 FM 2673, about 3 miles west of Sattler in a scenic area of hills. The museum opens Thursday through Sunday from noon to 4pm, with guided tours given every hour on the half hour.
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This article appears in November 22 • 2024.
