Hill Country Grill & Martini Bar
100 West Hopkins Street
San Marcos, Texas 78666
(512) 396-6100

Lunch - Tuesday ~ Saturday 11:00am - 4:30pm
Dinner - Tuesday ~ Thursday 4:30pm - 9:00pm
Friday and Saturday
4:30pm - 10:00pm
Sunday Brunch
Closed Monday

Hill Country Grill at Quail Creek
2701 Airport Highway 21
San Marcos, Texas 78667
(512) 353-1764

Lunch- Tuesday ~ Sunday 11:00am -3:00pm
Closed Monday

History of State Bank and Trust Building

The State Bank and Trust Company was robbed in 1923 by the Newton brothers as described by the plaque outside the front door… The Newton Gang About 1914 the Newton brother ~Jessie, Willis, Doc, and Joe ~ were getting tired of facing mules’ rumps as they plowed their daddy’s Callahan County farm. So they drifted into train and bank robbery in a four-year career that took them throughout the Midwest and central Canada. In 1923 they broke into this building in the early morning of January 4 to rob the old State Bank and Trust Company. They poured so much nitro in the vault door that the side of the bank was partially blown away and coins showered across the street, as they made their haul and casually escaped. Consequently the Texas legislature dramatically increased the penalty for the illegal use of heavy explosives. On the night of June 12, 1924 in Rondout Illinois east of Libertyville, The Newton Gang stopped the No. 57 mail train on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul line and stole an estimated $3 million in cash, bonds, and jewelry, which in 2004 dollars would be more than $30 million, the biggest train hold-up in American history. Upon completing long prison terms the brothers lived in comfortable retirement in Uvalde, TX while the locals speculated about their income ~ which probably wasn’t social security. In 1968 Doc Newton attempted one last bank heist at Rowena, Texas. But at seventy-eight he had lost his edge. Brother Willis later proclaimed, as he himself was nearing ninety: “I’m not gonna rob anymore banks ~ not because I’m too good, I’m just too damn old.” As Willis saw it: “We was businessmen, just like doctors, lawyers, bankers, and insurance executives. Robbing banks and trains was our business.”