





It all started with a lake and a dream. Born of a quest for a personal family lakeside retreat in the Hill Country west of Austin, Horseshoe Bay Resort is the realization of one man’s vision. More than that, it is the crystallization of a dream — Norman C. Hurd’s dream.
In the mid-1960s, Hurd, a prosperous entrepreneur, decided he’d like a retreat on the lake for his family. Born in Brady, Texas, on the edge of the Hill Country, Hurd settled in San Antonio after World War II. He then moved to Houston, where he lived when he began his Horseshoe Bay Resort and Club journey.
HURD’S DOGGED PURSUIT
Initially rebuffed in his efforts to find a suitable site for a second home on the water, Hurd reverted to a philosophy that had served him well in his business ventures: start from scratch, think big, work hard.
Equipped with a stint in the Army Air Corps during World War II and with studies in law and psychology at Baylor University, Hurd came to personify the archetypal Texas legend, a man with unshakable doggedness in pursuit of a goal. As a lone operator, he notched lucrative accomplishments in oil, mining and real estate. He dabbled — successfully — in at least a half-dozen other diverse business ventures. This was a man who would not be dissuaded easily.
In 1969, Hurd and his wife Dorothy happened upon an old friend, Clayton Nolen, a realtor and then the mayor of Marble Falls, a town six miles east of where Horseshoe Bay Resort sits today. Ultimately, with Nolen’s help, Hurd spotted what he wanted. With his instincts and his ambitions, he now had much bigger plans than a vacation home.
Hurd recognized that the area, long considered more suitable for goats than humans, could be transformed into a tropical paradise on the shores of a major body of water, opening the opportunity for Texas to become a major destination that could compete with Florida and California. He inquired about a ranch property that extended to the shores of Lake LBJ, renamed that in 1965 for the Hill Country’s most famous citizen, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who hailed from the nearby town of Stonewall. President Johnson frequented the region during those years, even entertaining dignitaries there, both at his hometown ranch and at a ranch he owned on the lake. Because of that magnet, the rest of America was discovering the Hill Country and Lake LBJ as well…The lake was the critical component in Hurd’s mind. One of seven reservoir lakes on Texas’ version of the Colorado River, Lake LBJ was ideal for Hurd’s purposes. It was the only one of the seven that maintained a constant water level, making it ideal for boating, water skiing and other water sports. Combined with the rugged limestone- and granite-infused beauty of the area’s hills and valleys, studded with live oaks, fragrant junipers and thorny desert-style plants, the lake setting would undoubtedly prove a powerful enticement for tourists, families and retirees. Now all Hurd had to do was to acquire this one-of-a-kind ranch property.
It wasn’t easy. Norman enlisted his cousin Wayne Hurd, a Dallas-based real estate developer, to investigate the possibility of establishing a luxury resort/residential community on the shores of Lake LBJ. Initially, Wayne was skeptical, but once he visited the area, he understood his cousin’s enthusiasm. To continue to read this article…go to hsbresort.com and click on the Lake and Hill Magazine link for a digital version of the magazine. This article continues on p. 37 of the digital magazine at hsbresort.com.