The Incident at Skull Gulch Ranch: The Story of the Courthouse Cannon

Published in the Kerrville Daily Times on August 29, 2026

This cannon, a relic of the Civil War, stands
on the eastern side of the Kerr County Courthouse

A reader approached me recently and asked about a story she heard involving the cannon on the courthouse lawn. The woman heard that shortly after being installed in the court-house square, the cannon was fired in celebration and a truck parked nearby was totaled in the process.

This is the second time the question has come up this year. It’s a story I had never heard before. I decided to do some digging to learn the cannon’s history and the truth behind the rumored truck destruction.

The story is interesting enough to make it into a column, so here it is.

The cannon once belonged to C.W. “Bill” Bocock, a master machinist and founder of Technical Instrument Company, a Houston-based business that was involved with seismographic equipment. He also had a passion for collecting and restoring classic cars. He came to Kerr County in 1952, when he and his wife moved to Skull Gulch Ranch in Hunt.

Sometime in the 1950s, a survey crew for Bocock’s company was working near a historic plantation on the banks of the Sabine River in Louisiana. The crew found all of the metal parts of a Civil War cannon buried on the property — the wooden parts had long since rotted away. Bocock approached the owners of the plantation and offered to purchase the historic weapon from them. The family agreed, and Bocock took the cannon home.

He researched the 1,500-pound cannon and made sketches of what he would need in order to restore it. He bought redwood from a company in Houston. Then he had the wood pressure treated and creosoted to make the wood impervious to moisture and give it a longer life.

He applied his machinist and restoration skills to the task and, before long, Bocock had a fully functional Civil War cannon.

For many years, it stood sentinel, overlooking a hilltop at his ranch. He even had 30 cannonballs cast from alloy aluminum. It became a family tradition to fire the cannon during New Year’s and Fourth of July celebrations on the ranch.

Here’s where I think the story of the totaled truck came from: The damage didn’t occur on the courthouse square, but rather on Skull Gulch Ranch.

One year, when the family was hosting several friends at the ranch during hunting season, Bocock decided to show off the cannon.

“We fired the cannonball across the river at a rock ledge,” Bocock said in an interview in 2000. “I put two popcorn sacks of powder in the barrel to make a big boom and fired it. The ball hit and ricocheted back and hit a car’s doorpost and broke all the glass in the car. It did quite a bit of damage.”

Bocock added that the man who owned the car had to tell his insurance agent something, so he put “source of damage unknown” on the insurance claim, rather than trying to explain how his car was damaged by a Civil War-era cannon.

Bocock with the cannon prior to its installation at the Court House.

In May of 2000, Bocock was 83 years old and considering what to do with his estate. Rather than trying to decide who among his heirs was going to receive the cannon, he wanted to find a place where the entire community could enjoy the historic relic. He approached the Kerr County Commissioners and told them he would like to give the cannon to the county and have it installed near the War Memorial on the courthouse square. He said he was willing to pay for the concrete slab and tie downs to secure the cannon and have the cannon moved to the square.

The commissioners accepted Bocock’s offer, and the cannon was installed on the eastern side of the courthouse on Feb. 5, 2001.  

Bill Bocock died the next year, on Aug. 5, 2002.

I have to admit, I never gave the cannon much thought over the years, except during the holiday season, when it is decorated with a sense of whimsy and humor. For some reason, I thought it had “always” been there, and I didn’t realize it was a more recent piece of Kerr County history.