Blanco County was created by the state legislature on February 11, 1858, with its county seat to be called Blanco and located within five miles of the county’s center, but by 1862 boundary changes left Blanco no longer at the geographical center. James Polk Johnson and other settlers on the Pedernales River began petitioning for a new county seat, and in 1879 Johnson City was founded near the new center of the county in hopes of gaining that role. After a number of hotly contested elections, the people of the north succeeded, and in 1890 Johnson City became the seat of county government. The present-day Johnson City Bank building was first used as a courthouse, but it proved inadequate, so San Antonio architect Henry T. Felps designed a new courthouse, and on October 1, 1915, the construction contract was awarded to James Waterston, a stonemason trained in Scotland who had come to Texas in 1883 to work on the state capitol building. Wagon and mule teams hauled rough-hewn stone from Deer Creek about two miles south of town, lime for the mortar came from four miles southeast of Johnson City, and finished stones were hoisted into place by block and tackle pulled by mules. The Commissioners Court officially accepted the new courthouse on September 1, 1916, and a gala celebration followed with free barbecue, local dignitaries, speakers from Austin, a talent show, and a dance, while many attendees arrived by horse and buggy after leaving home before daylight. In rural areas the courthouse continues to be the center and heartbeat of the people, and in Blanco County the building remains much as James Waterston likely would have recognized it more than a century after he constructed it.