Skip to content

Cat Spring, Texas

Everything Cat Spring is known for

2 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

RoadyGoat plays music like this when you drive through Cat Spring. It's free on iPhone, and full songs play through Apple Music.

Sign up for the free newsletter Get the iPhone app

Music in Cat Spring

Songs About Cat Spring

Cat Spring
Cameron Knowler
79%
"TITLE"
Between Katy and Cat Spring
Brad Bowman
78%
"TITLE"

Artists From Cat Spring

C
Carson Jeffrey
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Cat Spring

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Cat Spring.

US Route 90 9 songs Interstate 10 36 songs Brazos River 43 songs Texas Colorado River 6 songs Texas State Highway 71 2 songs U.S. Route 59 9 songs

History of Cat Spring

Salt Grass Trail Ride — Cat Spring Start RoadyGoat

1952

Cat Spring, in Austin County, is where the modern Salt Grass Trail Ride sets out — the 2004 ride, the 53rd annual, left Wittenburg's Pasture near Cat Spring on February 21, 2004. The Salt Grass is the oldest of the trail rides that herald the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. It was first ridden in 1952, when Brenham mayor Reese Lockett, radio man Pat Flaherty, rancher E. H. Marks, and John Warnasch left Brenham on January 30th with the LH7 chuck wagon and followed the old pioneer trail to Houston. From a handful of riders that first year, it grew into dozens of wagons and hundreds of riders covering roughly 70 miles over seven days to the downtown Houston rodeo parade.

The Town That Walked to the Railroad RoadyGoat

1834

Cat Spring is older than the state it sits in. Germans out of Oldenburg and Westphalia settled here in 1834, two years before San Jacinto, led by Ludwig von Roeder and Robert Kleberg, pulled across the ocean by letters a man named Friedrich Ernst kept mailing home about the Mill Creek valley. And the name is not somebody's housecat. One of Leopold von Roeder's sons killed a puma at a spring feeding the San Bernard River, and the spring got named for the cat. By 1856 the farmers here had founded the first agricultural society in all of Texas, and by 1878 they had a post office. Then, in the early 1890s, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad came through and tied Cat Spring to New Ulm on the west and Sealy on the east, and this town did something towns almost never do. It did not wait for the railroad to reach Main Street. The town went to the railroad. The post office moved. The blacksmith moved. Most of the businesses in Cat Spring picked themselves up and resettled along the new line. That is why the street running beside those rails is called Front Street. It is named for what it faces. And the tracks are still live, still hauling freight for the Union Pacific, over the same alignment the maps still label Missouri-Kansas-Texas.

RoadyGoat →

Sixty-Seven Years of School, Then a Sign in the Grass RoadyGoat

1880

There is a metal sign standing in the grass in the middle of Cat Spring, and it is close to the only thing left that will tell you this town used to run its own school. Austin County Historic School Site, it says. This was the location of Cat Spring ISD, 1880 to 1947. Sixty-seven years. The county history backs up that start date: by 1880 Cat Spring had a gin, a saw mill, a grist mill, a planing mill, a hotel, a saddle shop, a shoe shop, a church, and a school. That was about as much town as this town ever got. And the Germans who founded the place had landed in 1834, two years before San Jacinto, so Cat Spring was already old when that school opened. Then the plaque stops at 1947, and here is the strange part. The district outlived the date on its own marker. Sealy's school history says Cat Spring and Sealy voted to consolidate on March 21st, 1953, and the county board approved it that April. Six years sit between the year on this plaque and the year the name came off the map, and nobody wrote down why. What the sign does tell you is who put it there. In 2004 the citizens of Austin County went out and did this on purpose, town after town, same plaque, same sentence, different dates. Wallis Independent, 1904 to 1929. Cat Spring ISD, 1880 to 1947. A county deciding that the schools it lost were still worth marking, even with nothing left standing to point at.

RoadyGoat →

San Felipe de Austin, TX

1824

San Felipe de Austin, on the west bank of the Brazos River at the Old San Antonio Road crossing, a site now on Interstate Highway 10 two miles east of Sealy in southeastern Austin County, was founded in 1824 by Stephen F. Austin as the unofficial capital of his colony. It became the first urban center in the Austin colony, which stretched northward from the Gulf of Mexico as far as the Old San Antonio Road and extended from the Lavaca River in the west to the San Jacinto River in the east. By October 1823, after briefly considering a location on the lower Colorado River, Austin, with the assistance of the Baron de Bastrop , decided to establish his capital on the Brazos near the settlement at which John McFarland operated a ferry. The site chosen was on a high, easily defensible bluff overlooking broad, fertile bottomlands. The location offered a number of advantages, including a central location and sources of fresh water independent of the Brazos. In late 1823 surveyor Seth Ingram began the tasks of defining the boundaries of the five-league expanse of prairie and woodland encompassed by the municipality and platting the town proper. The town's name was proposed by the governor of the Eastern Interior Provinces, Felipe de la Garza, to honor both the empresario , Austin, and the governor's own patron saint. Although planned on the basis of the prevailing Mexican town model with a regular grid of avenues and streets dominated by four large plazas, the settlement soon began to sprawl westward from the Brazos for more than a half mile along both sides of the Atascosito Road . By 1828 the community comprised a population of about 200, three general stores, two taverns, a hotel, a blacksmith shop, and some forty or fifty log cabins. Ten of the inhabitants were Hispanic, and the rest were of American or European origin; males outnumbered females ten to one. The town, generally called simply San Felipe, was the unquestioned social, economic, and political center of the Austin colony. Its expanding but unstable population was swelled by large numbers of immigrants and other transients. Austin built a residence on Bullinger's Creek, a half mile west of the Brazos, from which he directed the government of his colony for four years before handing responsibility for the management of most affairs to the ayuntamiento of San Felipe in 1828. The colonial land office was headquartered in the town, and Austin assumed an active role in its operation. Regular mail service in the colony was inaugurated in 1826 when Samuel May Williams was appointed postmaster in San Felipe; with seven separate postal routes converging here, the town remained the hub of the Texas postal service until the Texas Revolution . One of the earliest newspapers in Texas, the Texas Gazette , began publication in San Felipe on September 25, 1829, under the editorship of Godwin B. Cotten . Gail Borden 's Telegraph and Texas Register , which became the unofficial journal of the revolution, was first published in San Felipe on October 10, 1835. The town's notable early inhabitants also included Josiah H. Bell, James B. Miller, Noah Smithwick, and Horatio Chriesman . Many other significant figures in early Texas history resided temporarily at San Felipe or visited periodically on business. Several large cotton plantations were established in the bottomlands near the town during the 1820s, and from the outset San Felipe became a trading center for the staple. By 1830 John Cummins had constructed a grist and lumber mill near the town. As stock raising developed in the vicinity, small herds of cattle were driven from the town across the country to Nacogdoches. San Felipe was located only some eighty miles above the mouth of the Brazos, and keelboats were used extensively to transport goods between the town and various coastal ports. Nevertheless, most articles of commerce were carried overland to the coast by wagon until after the revolution. Unreliable water levels and turbulenc

Tsha Handbook → · 4.6 mi away

Elemelech Swearingen

1831

(September 25, 1805 - May 15, 1887) Austin County pioneer and Texas War for Independence veteran, Elemelech Swearingen, was born in Shepherdsville, Kentucky (Bullitt Co.) in 1805. He married Angelina Weeks (1811-1883) in 1827 and in 1831, moved with his family to Texas. The Swearingens became the last additions to Stephen F. Austin's Old 300 when another family withdrew their application. Swearingen built a farm, settling on land near what became the community of Millheim, in present-day Austin County. The Swearingens were among the earliest settlers in this area, where they raised nine children and lived the rest of their lives. Elemelech Swearingen was a leader in Millheim and served as the community's first postmaster. During the Texas Revolution, Elemelech Swearingen served as a second sergeant in the 1st Regiment Infantry, Company B under Captain Amasa Turner. He later served in the ill-fated Mier Expedition. Angelina Swearingen died in 1883, and Elemelech died in 1887. Their burial site is on their land near their former home. For his military service, Elemelech received a headright of land in Callahan County. Swearingen Road runs through his former Austin County property, near his gravesite. Today, Elemelech Swearingen is remembered as an early Austin County pioneer and as a patriot who fought for Texas Independence. (2008)

Historical Marker → · 3.1 mi away

Ernest Witte Site

-2700

The Ernest Witte Site, an aboriginal cemetery, is located on a bluff overlooking the Brazos River in Austin County, about forty miles west of Houston. A low sandy knoll marks its location. In the 1930s Ernest Witte and his brother, then young boys living on a nearby farm, began digging for a treasure that they believed an eccentric uncle had buried in the area. In a deep hole dug into the sandy knoll they found human bones. In 1974 Witte relayed this information to a team of field archeologists from the Texas Archeological Survey of the University of Texas at Austin, which was investigating prehistoric Indian sites on land where the Houston Lighting and Power Company proposed to build the Allens Creek Nuclear Generating Station. The Ernest Witte Site was therefore included in the investigation, which was sponsored by the company. The site is coincidentally located where engineers planned to place one of the reactors for the nuclear plant. Excavations began in 1974 and continued into 1975. The field crew was headed by Grant D. Hall and under the general supervision of David S. Dibble, director of the Texas Archeological Survey. The site contained the skeletal remains of 238 people buried at various times over a period of more than 4,000 years, from 2700 B.C. to A.D. 1500. Reflecting the gradual accumulation of soil on the site and its periodic use as a burial ground by local prehistoric Indian populations, the burials occurred as four distinct, superimposed groups separated by layers of soil in a deposit with a maximum depth of about eight feet. The group of skeletons buried deepest in the site, and hence the oldest, contained the remains of an estimated sixty-one people. Radiocarbon assays indicate that these earliest burials occurred between 2700 and 1600 B.C. These Group 1 burials, affiliated with the Middle Archaic Period, thus constitute the oldest human cemetery presently known in Texas. Artifacts were placed in the graves of seven people. A Pedernales dart point and some pencil-shaped bone implements represent the complete array of grave goods for these Middle Archaic burials. Remains in the next layer were interred in the period from 600 B.C. to A.D. 300. This layer, designated Group 2, contained the skeletal remains of 145 people. Numerous interesting and significant artifacts were placed in the graves of these Late Archaic people. Seventy, or 48 percent, of the burials in Group 2 contained artifacts. Among these were dart points, marine-shell ornaments, corner-tang chert knives, boatstones, a ground-stone gorget, a graphite abrader, red jasper pebbles, ocher, biotite schist, various worked bone artifacts, and deer skulls and antlers. The rocks out of which some of the boatstones and the ground-stone gorget were made originated in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas. This fact suggests that the people represented by the Group 2 remains were participants in a far-reaching exchange network. Five of the people in Group 2 apparently died violently, as indicated by chert dart points stuck into their bones. Above Group 2 was a third layer of burials consisting of ten individuals. Group 3 developed in the period from A.D. 550 to 950. Only one individual in this group had grave inclusions. Scattered about the chest of an adult male were seven chert projectile points. The final use of the Ernest Witte Site as a cemetery was evidenced by a shallowly buried layer of the skeletons of thirteen people. These Group 4 burials, assigned to the Late Prehistoric Period, were probably interred well after A.D. 1000. No artifacts were found in any of these latest graves on the site. Development of cemeteries in Middle and Late Archaic times at Allens Creek and elsewhere on the Texas coastal plain has been interpreted as evidence for substantial growth of human populations in the region. As these people were hunters and gatherers who lived off the natural products of the land, it may have become necessary to define territories containing adeq

Tsha Handbook → · 4.6 mi away

Oliver, Asa Thompson

1868

Asa Thompson Oliver, planter, was born on November 14,1819, in Elbert County, Georgia, the son of Simeon and Mildred Oliver. He moved with his wife and children from Mississippi to Texas in the mid-1850s. By 1858 he had acquired almost a half league of prime farmland in the Hempstead area east of the Brazos River in Austin County, now in Waller County. That year his estate, which included seventy slaves, was valued at almost $48,000. By 1860 he had accumulated 105 slaves and held property worth $205,000, ranking him among the county's wealthiest residents. Following the outbreak of the Civil War in the spring of 1861, Oliver was chosen to help organize public defense as a member of the Central Executive Committee of Austin County. Like most large planters he was badly damaged by the Confederate defeat and emancipation; by mid-1865 his estate had plummeted in value to $25,000. In 1866 he and his wife and three children joined the postbellum emigration of former Confederates to Latin America; they settled in the colony of Santa Barbara D'Oeste in the Campinas district of São Paulo province, Brazil. There Oliver purchased an extensive plantation and a number of slaves and began cultivating his property. Unfortunately, his wife, Beatrice, and daughter, Indiana, who had suffered chronic distress since the end of the war and remained debilitated during the voyage to Brazil, contracted tuberculosis. Beatrice succumbed to the disease on July 13, 1868. Since there were no non-Catholic cemeteries nearby, Oliver devoted a small corner of one of his fields to burials and interred his wife there. Indiana, age seventeen, died on April 19, 1869, of the disease and was buried near her mother. That same year Oliver's younger daughter, Mildred, fourteen, distraught over the deaths of her mother and sister and burdened with the care of her father and younger brother, also fell gravely ill; she died shortly before Christmas and was interred beside her loved ones. The family burial ground, known as the "Campo," became a significant Protestant cemetery for the American settlers of the vicinity. A. T. Oliver was buried beside his family after he was murdered by one of his slaves on July 28, 1873. Subsequent owners of the Oliver property erected a small chapel on the cemetery grounds.

Tsha Handbook → · 4.6 mi away

Hess-Kollatschny Farm House

1876

Austrian-born Henry Hess (1851-1914) and his wife Fransiska (Schlapota) (b. 1854) built this cottage in 1876-77 in the German settlement of Cat Spring. Purchased by Charles (b. 1875) and Fannie (b. 1879) Kollatschny in 1904, the home was enlarged about 1915 and remained in that family over 50 years. Now located northwest of its original location, it features the original cypress siding and interior stenciling. The fine German craftsmanship is a tribute to Austin County's early settlers. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1982

Historical Marker →

Cat Spring

1832

A pioneer German settlement founded in 1832 by members of the Amsler, Kleberg and Von Roeder families.

Historical Marker →

Things to Do in Cat Spring

quirky 22.5 mi away
From Cotton Gin to Ice Cream Empire

In 1907 a group of Washington County dairy farmers converted an abandoned cotton gin into a creamery and started making butter. Ice cream production began in…
quirky 22.6 mi away
The Underground City Beneath the Streets

After fires ravaged Brenham three times in a decade the town did something no other Texas city had attempted. They built twenty-seven underground cisterns…
historical 22.7 mi away
The Night Federal Troops Burned Brenham

In 1866 Union soldiers occupying Brenham during Reconstruction clashed with local residents and set fire to an entire city block. The flames consumed…
food 22.2 mi away
Blue Bell Creameries

Tour the home of Texas' beloved ice cream in tiny Brenham. Free samples.
historical 22.5 mi away
The Summer the Fever Came

In 1867 just one year after Union troops burned part of Brenham a yellow fever epidemic swept through town. The mosquito-borne disease killed dozens and…
quirky 22.6 mi away
The Oldest Festival in Texas

When German immigrants fleeing the 1848 revolutions settled in Brenham they brought their traditions with them. The Maifest celebration they started became the…
historical 22.7 mi away
The Fire Department That Was Really an Army

The Brenham Volunteer Fire Department was organized after the 1866 burning but its true purpose had nothing to do with flames. The department was a civilian…
historical 22.7 mi away
The First Tax-Funded Schools

In 1875 Brenham became the first city in Texas to operate a tax-supported public school system. They didn't stop there. The system included a school for Black…

Everything Near Cat Spring

645 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Salt Grass Trail Ride — Cat Spring Start

    Cat Spring, in Austin County, is where the modern Salt Grass Trail Ride sets out — the 2004 ride, the 53rd annual, left Wittenburg's Pasture near Cat Spring on February 21, 2004. The Salt Grass is the oldest of the…

  • The Town That Walked to the Railroad · 0.1 mi

    Cat Spring is older than the state it sits in. Germans out of Oldenburg and Westphalia settled here in 1834, two years before San Jacinto, led by Ludwig von Roeder and Robert Kleberg, pulled across the ocean by letters…

  • Sixty-Seven Years of School, Then a Sign in the Grass · 0.2 mi

    There is a metal sign standing in the grass in the middle of Cat Spring, and it is close to the only thing left that will tell you this town used to run its own school. Austin County Historic School Site, it says. This…

  • What It Cost Them Just to Get Here · 2.1 mi

    Before Cat Spring was a town it was a body count. The Klebergs and the von Roeders left Germany on September 30, 1834, on a ship called the Congress. They got to New Orleans, where people told them not to go to Texas at…

  • They Won the War and Came Home to Ashes · 2.1 mi

    They had barely gotten the place standing when the revolution started. Louis and Albrecht von Roeder went to the siege of Bexar, serving from November 3rd to December 13th, 1835. Louis went back in on March 1st, 1836,…

  • Czech Texas Starts With One Letter Mailed From Here · 2.1 mi

    Cat Spring was a German settlement, and in 1850 it hired a preacher who was not German. Arnost Bergmann was born in 1798 in a village near Mlada Boleslav, in what is now the Czech Republic. He preached his last sermon…

  • The Alamo Is State Property Because of a Baby Born in a Cabin Here · 2.1 mi

    Rudolph Kleberg was born on the twenty-sixth of June, 1847, in a log cabin at Cat Spring. Same family that ended up running the King Ranch, except this one went into law and politics instead of cattle. Here is the part…

  • The Crop the Landowner Never Knew Was There · 2.1 mi

    On the morning of September 20, 2018, the Austin County Sheriff's Office followed up a report of a possible grow field on private land at Cat Spring. Back in heavily wooded country the deputies found somewhere between…

  • He Built Seven Miles of Prairie to Get the Birds Back · 2.1 mi

    Jim Willis settled at Cat Spring, grew up in rural Louisiana, worked as an analyst in the rice business and hunted quail all his life. Sometime in the 1990s he started asking where the birds had gone. A good part of the…

  • Nobody Can Agree What Animal This Town Is Named For · 2.1 mi

    Cat Spring is not named for anybody's housecat. The Germans called it Katzenquelle, cat spring, and for a while people said Wildcat Spring before it got shortened to what is on the sign now. Here is the fun part. The…

  • The Prince Got a Cup of Coffee and a Verdict · 2.1 mi

    Rosalie von Roeder Kleberg was born in Westphalia in 1813 and lived to 1907, and by any measure she earned her opinions. She survived the wreck off Galveston, the sickness on the island, the fever that killed her…

  • The Farmers' Club That Produced the First Aggie Valedictorian · 2.1 mi

    On June 7, 1856, forty farmers around Cat Spring started a club to figure out what would actually grow here. They called it the Landwirtschaftlicher Verein, and it is recognized as the oldest agricultural society in…

Show all 200 nearby places
  • The San Jacinto Man Nobody Can Find · 2.1 mi

    Louis von Roeder was born in Westphalia in 1806 and he did about as much as a man could do in a short life. He was in the advance party that reached this spring and caught the yellow fever that killed his brother…

  • A State Landmark the State Cannot Find · 2.1 mi

    There is a house in the Texas Historical Commission's files called the Hess-Kollatschny Farm House. Henry Hess, who was Austrian, built it with his wife Fransiska across 1876 and 1877. In 1904 Charles and Fannie…

  • The Drought Killed the Oaks and Left the Trash Brush Standing · 2.1 mi

    In 2011 Texas went through a drought that killed trees which had stood a hundred years. On a family ranch at Cat Spring the oaks died and the pastures went brown and ranchers around here were selling cattle they had no…

  • This Town Is on Film From 1956 · 2.1 mi

    There is motion picture film of this place from 1956. Jim W. Keeland shot stills and film around the Houston area for sixty years, and from 1948 to 1961 he did it for KPRC, the city's NBC station. One reel in his…

  • What Nearly Erased This Town Came Late · 2.1 mi

    Cat Spring came through a shipwreck, a fever season, and a homecoming to burned-out farms after the Runaway Scrape. The thing that nearly finished it arrived much later and much quieter. The Handbook of Texas puts the…

  • Cat Spring, TX · 2.1 mi

    You're driving through Cat Spring, settled in 1834 by German immigrants out of Oldenburg and Westphalia, led by Ludwig Anton Siegmund von Roeder and Robert Kleberg. A lot of them came because of the letters Friedrich…

  • The Burned-Out Farm That Led to the King Ranch · 2.1 mi

    Robert Justus Kleberg was born in Westphalia in 1803, educated for the law, and he spent the hardest years of his life right here. Shipwrecked at Galveston. San Jacinto in Moseley Baker's company. Home to a burned farm…

  • The Marker Says 1832. The History Books Say 1834. · 2.1 mi

    Walk up to the front entrance of the Cat Spring Agricultural Society and there is a marker the state put up in 1936 for the Texas Centennial. Read it closely, because it argues with the history books in two places and…

  • The 1856 Farm Club Is Still Arguing About Crops · 2.1 mi

    German farmers organized the Cat Spring Agricultural Society here in 1856 — the earliest agricultural society in Texas. A hundred and sixty-four years later, people were still coming to its hall to argue about crops. On…

  • Hess-Kollatschny Farm House · 2.1 mi · Historical Marker

    Austrian-born Henry Hess (1851-1914) and his wife Fransiska (Schlapota) (b. 1854) built this cottage in 1876-77 in the German settlement of Cat Spring. Purchased by Charles (b. 1875) and Fannie (b. 1879) Kollatschny in…

  • Cat Spring · 2.1 mi · Historical Marker

    A pioneer German settlement founded in 1832 by members of the Amsler, Kleberg and Von Roeder families.

  • The Cat That Answers to Forty Names · 2.1 mi

    Since you are in Cat Spring, here is the cat tangent. The animal most likely at the bottom of this town's name holds a Guinness record for having more names than any other mammal — better than forty in English alone.…

  • Fifteen Pounds, or a Hundred and Fifty · 2.1 mi

    Since you are in Cat Spring, here is the cat tangent, and it is a question of scale. If the animal at this spring was a bobcat, you are talking about fifteen to thirty-five pounds, fifteen to twenty inches at the…

  • The Cats That Purr Cannot Roar · 2.1 mi

    You are rolling through Cat Spring, so here is the cat tangent, and it is a rule with a hole in it. Cats sort into two camps that cannot trade places. The roarers — lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar — carry a hyoid bone in…

  • Why Cat Eyes Flare in Your Headlights · 2.1 mi

    You are in Cat Spring, so here is a cat tangent you may get to see for yourself tonight. Catch an animal in your headlights on a back road and the eyes throw the light straight back at you, lit up like they have got a…

  • How to Tell Which Cat Walked Through · 2.1 mi

    Since you are in Cat Spring, here is a useful cat tangent: how to read the print. Both Texas cats carry retractable claws, so a clean cat track almost never shows claw marks. That one detail separates cat from dog,…

  • Why the Cat Was at the Water · 2.1 mi

    Since you are in Cat Spring, here is the cat tangent worth thinking about: not which animal, but where. Every version of the story puts it at the spring. The Roeder account has the family camped at the water when they…

  • No Cat Has Ever Tasted Sugar · 2.1 mi

    The word cat is riding along in your ear, so here is a strange one. No cat has ever tasted anything sweet. Not your housecat, not a lion, not whatever came down to the water here. Sweet taste in mammals takes two…

  • The Physics Problem Named After Cats · 2.1 mi

    Since you are passing through Cat Spring, here is the cat tangent that has its own name in physics: the falling cat problem. A dropped cat turns over and lands on its feet, and for a long while that looked like…

  • The Cat Walked Into the Deal Itself · 2.1 mi

    One more cat tangent while the name is in your ear. Nearly every animal on a farm got there because people went and took it — penned it, bred it, made it smaller and calmer over generations. The cat is the odd one.…

  • Elemelech Swearingen · 3.1 mi · Historical Marker

    (September 25, 1805 - May 15, 1887) Austin County pioneer and Texas War for Independence veteran, Elemelech Swearingen, was born in Shepherdsville, Kentucky (Bullitt Co.) in 1805. He married Angelina Weeks (1811-1883)…

  • San Felipe de Austin, TX · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    San Felipe de Austin, on the west bank of the Brazos River at the Old San Antonio Road crossing, a site now on Interstate Highway 10 two miles east of Sealy in southeastern Austin County, was founded in 1824 by Stephen…

  • Ernest Witte Site · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    The Ernest Witte Site, an aboriginal cemetery, is located on a bluff overlooking the Brazos River in Austin County, about forty miles west of Houston. A low sandy knoll marks its location. In the 1930s Ernest Witte and…

  • Oliver, Asa Thompson · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Asa Thompson Oliver, planter, was born on November 14,1819, in Elbert County, Georgia, the son of Simeon and Mildred Oliver. He moved with his wife and children from Mississippi to Texas in the mid-1850s. By 1858 he had…

  • Allen, Martin · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what is now Austin County, and right here is where Martin Allen built his life in Texas. He was one of Stephen F. Austin's original Old Three Hundred settlers, arriving in 1821. But before that,…

  • Cat Spring Agricultural Society Hall · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, not far from Sealy, and right here is the Cat Spring Agricultural Society Hall. Built in 1902 by Joachim Hintz, this place was designed with a unique twelve-sided shape and a…

  • Kenney, John Wesley · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, and right here, you're passing through the town named for John Wesley Kenney. But Kenney wasn't just a preacher; he was a pioneer of Methodism in Texas. He arrived in 1833, building…

  • Kleberg, Louis · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, and right here is the area where Louis Kleberg fought in one of the more brutal Indian skirmishes of the Texas frontier. Kleberg, a German immigrant who arrived in Texas in 1834,…

  • Kleberg, Robert Justus [I] · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what was once the Texas frontier, and right here, in what is now Austin County, lived Robert Justus Kleberg. A lawyer from Germany, he came to Texas in 1835 and quickly became a key figure. He…

  • Kuykendall, Jonathan Hampton · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what was once Austin County, a place that holds a dramatic story from the Texas Revolution. It's February of <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1836</say-as>, and a young man named J. Hampton…

  • Peters-Hacienda Community Hall · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, near the tiny community of Peters. Right here, you're passing the Peters-Hacienda Community Hall, a place that started as a shooting club for German immigrants. Organized in 1897,…

  • Pier, James Bradford · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, not far from Kenney, and right here in the community of Travis is where James Bradford Pier settled his family in early 1836. Just as they were getting established, Pier and his…

  • San Bernard River · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, and right here, the San Bernard River has a mystery that's been baffling locals for over a century. They call it the Singing River, because for more than 100 years, people have…

  • Shelby, David · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, not far from the community of Shelby. This place is named for David Shelby, one of Stephen F. Austin's original Old Three Hundred settlers, who arrived here in 1822. Shelby was more…

  • Swiss · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, near Industry, and you're passing through the echoes of Schoenau. This community was settled by German-speaking Swiss, who built a hall nearby for their 'Harmony Verein.' There,…

  • Cat Spring, TX · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Cat Spring, at the intersection of Farm roads 2187 and 949, on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad and the west bank of Bernard Creek in western Austin County, was first settled in 1834 by a group of German…

  • Czechs · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Czechs are a Slavic people from Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of Silesia. Among the first Czechs to arrive in Texas were the writer Carl Postl (Charles Sealsfield), who may have visited the Texas-Louisiana borderland as…

  • Vertebrate Paleontology · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Although fossil vertebrate remains were reported from Austin County, Texas, more than a century ago, these and other fossils obtained over the next four decades seemed to be of little more than local interest. However,…

  • Bell, Andrew Jackson · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, where in the early 1860s, a local legislator named Andrew Jackson Bell faced a rebellion. Bell, a landowner and former sheriff, was tasked with enforcing the Confederate…

  • Cuney, Philip Minor · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, where Philip Minor Cuney built his life and legacy. Born in Louisiana in 1808, Cuney came to Texas around 1840 and became a prosperous cotton planter. He was a delegate to the…

  • Kuykendall, William · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what is now Austin County, a region settled by pioneers like William Kuykendall. He arrived in Texas with his family in 1821, part of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred. At just sixteen, he was…

  • Millheim, TX · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Millheim was established eight miles south of Bellville in central Austin County about 1845, when a mill was constructed on Clear Creek, a tributary of Mill Creek. The founders of the community were German immigrants…

  • Shelby, TX · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Shelby is at the junction of Farm roads 389 and 1457, twenty-four miles northwest of Bellville in extreme northwestern Austin County. It was settled in the early 1840s and was named for David Shelby , reportedly the…

  • Austin County · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, a place that was once a frontier zone for early Texas settlers. Imagine this: the early 1820s. Nomadic Tonkawa tribes, and sometimes the more feared Karankawas and Wichitas, were a…

  • Kenney, TX · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Kenney is at the junction of Farm Road 2754 and State Highway 36, on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway eight miles north of Bellville in far northern Austin County. Settlement in the vicinity began in the late…

  • Nelsonville, TX · 4.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Nelsonville is at the junction of State Highway 159 and Farm Road 2502, nine miles west of Bellville in west central Austin County. The area was first settled in the 1850s; among the first settlers was Edward Daughtry,…

  • Millheim Harmonie Verein · 4.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Millheim community, where German immigrants brought their love of music and song with them to Texas. The Millheim Harmonie Verein, a singing society, was officially organized in 1873, though it…

  • Engelking Cemetery · 5.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Engelking Cemetery, a burial site that began as a family plot on a farm purchased in 1842. It grew to include Civil War veterans and even a slave named 'Uncle Wash,' who saved the Engelking…

  • Bednar Family Homestead · 5.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through an area settled by Czech immigrants. Joseph and Anna Bednar arrived with their six children in 1876. After Joseph died that same year, Anna and her kids worked as tenant farmers until she bought…

  • The County Line Is the Water · 6.9 mi

    Somewhere along this stretch of Interstate Ten, between Sealy and Columbus, the highway crosses the San Bernard River, and almost nobody driving it notices the bridge. It is worth knowing what is under there. The San…

  • Bellville High School · 7.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Bellville's high school, built during the Great Depression. After an initial funding denial, local citizens rallied, and the school district secured federal New Deal funds for this new…

  • The Nineteen Thirty Seven Road From Texline to Orange · 7.3 mi

    On May eighteenth, nineteen thirty seven, a Texas highway minute order gave the name Veterans of Foreign Wars Memorial Highway to a chain of roads. The route started at the New Mexico state line at Texline and ran to…

  • The Quarter Mile Nobody Gets To Drive · 7.5 mi

    Out west of Sealy, close enough to Interstate Ten to hear it, there is a quarter mile of asphalt laid dead straight, with grandstands, a control tower and timing gear, and almost nobody is allowed to use it. It is…

  • Cumings Family Vault · 7.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Cumings Family Vault, a remarkable piece of Austin County history. Rebecca Cumings and her three brothers were among Stephen F. Austin's original 'Old 300' settlers, arriving in Texas way back in…

  • A Cutting Torch Does Not Melt Steel, It Burns It · 7.7 mi

    The acetylene that ships out of that Bellville plant on Highway 159 ends up feeding cutting torches, and here is the surprise in how they work. Everyone assumes a cutting torch slices steel by melting it, but the real…

  • The Accident That Lit the Mines and Built the Welder · 7.7 mi

    The cheap acetylene that a Bellville plant would eventually pour out by the tankful began with a mistake in 1892. A Canadian inventor named Thomas Willson was trying to make aluminum in an electric-arc furnace, fusing…

  • Bellville and the Hottest Flame in Manufacturing · 7.8 mi

    Bellville looks like cattle country, but just off Highway 159 sits an industry built around one of the hottest flames in manufacturing. Back in 1985 a company called Western International Gas and Cylinders started here…

  • A Rock That Makes Fire When It Gets Wet · 7.8 mi

    Every tank of gas that leaves the acetylene plant on Highway 159 in Bellville starts with something strange, a grayish rock that catches fire when it gets wet. The rock is calcium carbide, and drop a chunk of it into…

  • Why an Acetylene Tank Is Full of Sponge and Acetone · 7.8 mi

    Before the Bellville wholesaler can ship a single tank, it has to solve a dangerous problem, and the fix is hidden inside every cylinder. Cut open an empty acetylene tank and you will not find a hollow steel bottle, you…

  • Bellville Concordia · 7.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Bellville, and right here, we're talking about music! Back in 1860, a group of German immigrants gathered in a home nearby and organized a singing society called Concordia. Members like Fritz Brandes…

  • Machemehl, L.A. and Adelheid · 8.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past a true Texas original, the Machemehl house, built in 1920. Designed by famous Houston architect Alfred C. Finn, this Craftsman bungalow is unusual for its one-and-a-half story design, sometimes…

  • Salt Grass Trail Ride — Bellville Camp · 8.1 mi

    Bellville, the seat of Austin County, is one of the camps on the Salt Grass Trail Ride — riders bound the fairgrounds here on the way to Houston. A trail-ride camp is its own small town: better than two dozen wagons,…

  • Two Points Short, and the Same Back Carried Both · 8.1 mi

    Bellville went 15-0 into the 2023 state championship game. The regular season included six shutouts — among them 69-0 over Sealy and 72-0 over Wharton — and the Brahmas outscored their first four playoff opponents…

  • Bellville's First Final, and the Best Player in Texas · 8.1 mi

    Bellville reached its first state championship game in 1960 and lost to Denver City 26-21 in the Class 2A final at San Angelo. The Brahmas' star was Ernie Koy Jr., a halfback, punter and linebacker who was named team…

  • The Pasture of Pain and 28 Passes All Season · 8.1 mi

    Bellville's home field carries one of the great nicknames in Texas high school football: the Pasture of Pain. The identity matches the name — a misdirection-heavy wing/slot-T running attack and a defense to go with it.…

  • A Super Bowl Ring and a Four-Star Pass Rusher · 8.1 mi

    Emmanuel Sanders was a first-team all-district pick at running back, receiver AND safety for Bellville. As a senior he produced 913 yards from scrimmage and seven touchdowns on 80 touches, with 49 tackles and three…

  • Ranked Number One, Then Forty-Six Years of Waiting · 8.1 mi

    Dave Campbell's Texas Football ranked Bellville the No. 1 Class 2A team in the state to open the 1977 season, and the Brahmas nearly delivered: they went 14-1, reaching the state championship game at Baylor Stadium in…

  • Ayres, David · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, perhaps near Bellville, and you're passing through a place that holds a piece of Texas's spiritual beginnings. David Ayres, a merchant from New York, arrived in Texas in 1833,…

  • Bonner, Weldon Philip H. [Juke Boy] · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Bellville, Texas, the birthplace of Weldon "Juke Boy" Bonner, a legendary bluesman who learned guitar by age twelve and taught himself to play. He quit school and headed to Houston, where he…

  • Crump, William E. · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, near Bellville, where William E. Crump made his home. He was a wealthy plantation owner who arrived in Texas in the early 1840s. Though he'd never held public office before, Crump…

  • Bell, Thomas · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, near the town of Bellville, which owes its name to Thomas Bell. Bell was a stockman and farmer, but in 1835, he answered the call to revolution. He joined the Lynchburg Volunteers…

  • Shelburne-Reinecker House · 8.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're passing the Shelburne-Reinecker House, a home that saw a century of family life and architectural change. It started in 1882 as a simple one-story house built by James Henry Shelburne, a lawyer, state legislator,…

  • Hunt, Zimri · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, near Bellville, where Zimri Hunt first practiced law. He arrived in Texas in 1846, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1849. Hunt's political career began in 1850 when he…

  • McNutt, Robert · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, a region that saw action during the Texas Revolution. Right here, Robert McNutt, a veteran of the War of 1812, settled with his family in 1834. Just two years later, he answered the…

  • Osterhout, John Patterson · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, Texas, and right here is where a fascinating character named John Patterson Osterhout landed in 1851. Originally from Pennsylvania, this lawyer and journalist became a staunch…

  • Bellville, TX · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Bellville, a town with roots stretching back to the earliest days of Texas settlement. Right here, in 1846, the citizens decided to move their county seat from San Felipe. Thomas Bell, one of…

  • Portis, David Young · 8.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what was once Austin County, and maybe you've heard of Bellville. Right here, David Young Portis, a lawyer and politician, was living in 1860. He owned over 35,000 acres and seventeen enslaved…

  • He Killed a Trooper, Then Became a Paralegal · 8.2 mi

    Billy George Hughes was booked into the old Austin County Jail here in Bellville, and his case would not truly end for almost a quarter of a century. A grand jury indicted him for the capital murder of peace officer…

  • Bellville's Trump Burger, now President Burger · 8.2 mi

    In downtown Bellville, the Austin County seat about an hour west of Houston, sits the burger joint that opened in 2020 as Trump Burger — a small, openly MAGA-themed spot near the historic courthouse square that became a…

  • Original Site of St. Mary's Episcopal Church · 8.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the original site of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Bellville. Anglicans here started gathering in the 1850s, holding their first official service in 1861. By 1862, St. Mary's was a new congregation…

  • How a Bell Finds Its Voice · 8.3 mi

    You're in Bellville, so here's a useful bell tangent: striking a bell bends its metal and launches several vibration patterns at once. Shape, diameter, thickness, alloy, and where it is struck determine the mix of…

  • The Liberty Bell's Crack · 8.3 mi

    You're in Bellville, so here's a useful bell tangent: the Liberty Bell was cast in London for Pennsylvania's statehouse and cracked soon after arrival. Philadelphia founders recast it, and a later crack grew until an…

  • Pavlov Did More Than Ring a Bell · 8.3 mi

    You're in Bellville, so here's a useful bell tangent: Pavlov's dogs became shorthand for conditioning: pair a neutral signal with food until the signal alone triggers salivation. But the experiments used different…

  • Bell Curves and Decibels · 8.3 mi

    You're in Bellville, so here's a useful bell tangent: a bell-shaped curve describes the normal distribution, where values cluster near an average and become less common toward either extreme. Many measurements…

  • The Sheriff's Family Lived in the Castle With the Gallows · 8.3 mi

    Austin County's officials wrote down exactly what they thought of their old jail. Unsafe. Unfit. Inadequate. Three words, in the record, and then they went and did something about it. In 1896 they hired the Pauly Jail…

  • The Town's Original Notification System · 8.3 mi

    You're in Bellville, so here's a useful bell tangent: before sirens, phones, and group messages, a high bell tower could broadcast across a town. Different patterns announced worship, weddings, funerals, fires, danger,…

  • Cowbell to Stadium Noise · 8.3 mi

    You're in Bellville, so here's a useful bell tangent: cowbells began as practical tracking devices. A herder could locate livestock by sound when brush, hills, or darkness hid the animals. Different tones could even…

  • Time by Bell · 8.3 mi

    You're in Bellville, so here's a useful bell tangent: ship bells marked time during watches before a reliable clock was available to every sailor. The pattern advanced in half-hour steps through a four-hour watch, then…

  • From Pull Cord to Video Doorbell · 8.3 mi

    You're in Bellville, so here's a useful bell tangent: early doorbells were mechanical: pull a cord or turn a handle and hardware rang a bell inside. Electric systems let a push button close a circuit, first operating a…

  • Saved by Which Bell? · 8.3 mi

    You're in Bellville, so here's a useful bell tangent: saved by the bell most securely appears as a boxing expression: a fighter in trouble survives because the round-ending bell stops the action. The popular tale that…

  • A Wagon Shop With an Indoor Well and a Dumbwaiter · 8.3 mi

    E. Oscar Finn was born in Germany in 1866 and came across with his parents at three years old. He grew up a master mechanic and a builder of wagons and buggies, and in 1896 he and John Thomas Colleton put up a building…

  • The Texas Division and the Rapido River · 8.3 mi

    State Highway Thirty Six and U S Highway One Ninety both carry the name Thirty Sixth Division Memorial Highway. The Thirty Sixth Infantry Division was called the Texas Division, because when it entered federal service…

  • A Doctor Answered an 1888 Druggist With a Box of Anacin · 8.3 mi

    On the fifth of April, 1960, the 1888 Austin County courthouse burned. It had been designed by Eugene T. Heiner, a Houston architect whose courthouses were the pride of half the counties in this state, and it went down…

  • Austin County Jail · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the old Austin County Jail in Bellville, a fortress built to keep up with the county's growth. In 1896, the county declared their old jail unsafe and hired the Pauly Jail Building Company to…

  • Lewis, John Bell · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the home of John Bell Lewis, a man who shaped Bellville's future. Born in Alabama in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1845</say-as>, Lewis fought for the Confederacy before returning to Texas.…

  • Bellville General Hospital · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bellville, Texas, and right here is the site of a story that starts with two doctors and a four-bed hospital. Dr. Jubal Allen Neely, a World War I veteran, opened a practice here in 1915. When an…

  • Bellville · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising through Bellville, a town with roots stretching back to Stephen F. Austin's original colonists. Brothers Thomas and James Bell arrived here way back in 1822. By 1846, Thomas offered land for a new county…

  • The Building Bellville Can't Agree On · 8.3 mi

    Take a lap around the Bellville square and you're circling the most argued-about building in Austin County. The courthouse in the middle is a stark slab of granite and concrete, pure Atomic Age Modernism, designed by…

  • One Paper Was Saved Page by Page. The Other Has No Name. · 8.3 mi

    Bellville had a German newspaper called the Bellville Wochenblatt. It started in 1891 and ran to 1909, weekly, eight pages an issue, printed in German for a town where a big share of the population still thought in that…

  • Two Troopers, Back to Back on Interstate Ten · 8.3 mi

    Interstate Ten in Austin County, from State Highway Thirty Six to the Colorado County line, is the Trooper William Kohlleppel the Third Memorial Highway. William Paul Kohlleppel the Third began his career with the Texas…

  • Bellville Methodist Church · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Bellville Methodist Church, a story that begins way back in 1822. That's when Thomas B. Bell, one of Stephen F. Austin's original colonists, settled here. He donated land for a church and…

  • Harigel House · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Harigel House in Bellville, a home with a story tied to Texas commerce. Emil H. Harigel, Sr., son of a Prussian immigrant, arrived in Bellville in 1881 and opened a successful business selling…

  • Pilley, Michael Robert · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past where Michael Robert Pilley lived, a man who saw action in the ill-fated Mier Expedition of 1842. Born across the Atlantic in Grantham, England, Pilley came to Texas and joined the fight for its…

  • Frank Cemetery · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Frank Cemetery, the final resting place for Friedrich and Marie Frank. Friedrich, a German immigrant, brought his beer-making skills to Austin County, establishing the Frank Brewery. It operated…

  • Bellville, TX · 8.3 mi

    Bellville, nestled in the heart of Austin County, has always been tied to the land. You can see it in the broad fields stretching out from town, and taste it in the local kitchens. While not widely known for one…

  • Three Saloons and Twelve General Stores · 8.3 mi

    Here is Bellville in 1884, itemized. Two churches. Two hotels. A bakery. A lumberyard. Three saloons. Twelve general stores. A public school. And two weekly newspapers. Twelve general stores. In one small county-seat…

  • A Hundred and Eight Acres From One Brother, Thirty-Seven and a Half From the Other · 8.3 mi

    Bellville exists because Austin County wanted its government somewhere else. San Felipe had been the seat, and San Felipe had been burned in the revolution and never really came back. In 1846 the county went looking for…

  • David Lewis - Bellville, Texas · 8.3 mi

    That was David Lewis, a traditional country voice raised in Bellville, Texas, where country roots run deep. He grew up singing in a church worship band, then worked his way onto the Texas opry circuit, sharing stages…

  • Oak Knoll Cemetery · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Oak Knoll Cemetery, which began as a family burial plot. Frederick and Marie Luhn bought this land in 1848, and Frederick was buried here in 1854. His wife eventually remarried, and the couple began…

  • First National Bank of Bellville · 8.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the First National Bank of Bellville, chartered way back in 1890. It's the oldest bank in Austin County and one of only four national banks in Texas chartered that same year. After opening on the…

  • The Hill: Bellville's Oldest Burger Joint, Named by the Kids Who Ate There · 8.4 mi

    The Hill, at 758 West Main Street in Bellville, is the oldest restaurant in town and has been griddling old-fashioned burgers and spinning malts since 1952. It did not start out with that name. It opened as Schrader's,…

  • Joachim H. Hintz · 8.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Bellville, and just a little ways off the road, you might still find them: the unique, round dance halls designed and built by master builder Joachim Hintz. Born in Germany, Hintz came to Texas in…

  • Finn, E.O. · 8.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the E.O. Finn building in Bellville, a place that was once the heart of a master mechanic's business. Built in 1896 by German immigrant E. Oscar Finn, this wasn't just a shop – it was a home and a…

  • Bellville Turnverein Pavilion · 8.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Bellville Turnverein Pavilion, a place that's been the heart of this community for well over a century! Back in the late 1800s, two social clubs, the Bellville Social Club and the Bellville…

  • Bellville Masonic Lodge Building · 8.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Bellville Masonic Lodge. Chartered in 1858, this lodge was built by its members that same year. The second floor was for lodge meetings, but the first floor? It served double duty as…

  • Austin County · 8.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Austin County, named for the Father of Texas himself, Stephen F. Austin. This area began as part of Austin's original land grant from Mexico in 1821. It was officially created as a municipality in…

  • Alexander Glenn Family Graveyard · 8.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Alexander Glenn Family Graveyard. Alexander Glenn and his wife Sarah came from Georgia, settling in Austin County before moving to Bellville in 1854. They purchased one of the first homes built…

  • Saint John Lutheran Church · 8.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Saint John Lutheran Church in Bellville, a congregation that started with just seven families back in 1896. They held their first services in the local Methodist church building before completing…

  • Coshatte Cemetery · 9.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Coshatte Cemetery, established in 1915. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2011.

  • Pilgrims Rest Cemetery · 9.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Pilgrims Rest Cemetery, established in 1861. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2006.

  • Newman's Castle: The Real Medieval Castle a Bellville Baker Built by Hand · 9.4 mi

    Newman's Castle, at 1041 Old Highway 36 just north of Bellville in Austin County, is exactly what it sounds like: a full medieval-style castle, built by hand by one man. Mike Newman ran Newman's Bakery in Bellville, but…

  • The Odd Octagon on the Square · 9.4 mi

    A mile or so southeast of the Bellville courthouse square stands a building that shouldn't work and does: a round wooden dance hall, twelve sides, eighty feet across, with a cone roof and a cupola on top. This is the…

  • The Freethinkers of Austin County · 9.4 mi

    When German immigrants settled around Bellville, they brought more than just farming skills. They brought ideas. A significant number were 'Freidenker,' or Freethinkers—intellectuals, atheists, and agnostics who had…

  • Mentz-Bernardo Community · 9.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through the Mentz-Bernardo Community, a place shaped by German immigrants starting as early as the 1830s. They bypassed formal colonization efforts, choosing this region for its agricultural potential. By…

  • Machemehl Cemetery · 9.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Machemehl Cemetery, a reminder of German immigrant pioneers in Austin County. Michael Machemehl arrived from Saxony in 1849. The cemetery began in 1850 with the death of his daughter-in-law,…

  • First Czech Immigrants in Texas · 10.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Austin County, home to the first large wave of Czech immigrants to Texas. While a Czech named Jiri Rybar was in Galveston way back in 1829, it was letters from Rev. Josef Arnost Bergman, a settler…

  • Prasek's: The I-10 Smokehouse Stop · 10.1 mi

    Right off Interstate 10 on the edge of Sealy sits Prasek's, the classic Texas road-trip smokehouse stop. It runs under the Prasek's Hillje Smokehouse name, carried from the little town of Hillje where the family…

  • The Adventure · 10.2 mi

    A fifteen-year-old in Florida left his parents a note saying he was going on an adventure. He had lived in Texas before, so he bought a bus ticket back, and he took with him three hundred dollars, a mask, and a BB gun.…

  • Every Army Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam Trained at a Post Named for a New Ulm Boy · 10.2 mi

    Jacob Franklin Wolters was born near New Ulm on the second of September, 1871. He made the bar in 1892, got himself elected county attorney over in Fayette County, sat in the Texas House in 1897, moved his law practice…

  • She Gave Birth in Captivity and Came Home Without the Boys · 10.2 mi

    There is a state marker out here for a woman named Mary Theresa Hennecke Juergens, and it tells one of the hardest stories in Austin County. She and Conrad Juergens were German, married in 1833, and came to Texas that…

  • He Talked Hundreds Into Crossing an Ocean, Then Waited Two Years to Do It Himself · 10.2 mi

    Josef Lidumil Lesikar is buried at New Ulm, and a good share of Czech Texas exists because of him. He was born in 1806, a tailor and a farmer, and he got himself mixed up in politics back home in the revolutions of…

  • A Town of a Few Hundred People Ran a Daily Newspaper · 10.2 mi

    New Ulm had two hundred twenty-five people in 1898. At its absolute peak, in 1930, it had five hundred. In 1912, somewhere between those two numbers, this town started a DAILY newspaper. Not a weekly. The weekly already…

  • Mary Theresa Juergens · 10.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through New Ulm, Texas, near where Mary Theresa Juergens lived a life of incredible hardship. In 1836, while many fled the approaching Mexican army during the Runaway Scrape, Mary and her family stayed…

  • From Duff’s Settlement to New Ulm · 10.2 mi

    This town started out under a much plainer name. When a man named James Duff acquired title to this tract back in 1841, the place was simply called Duff's Settlement, after him. But the character of the town changed as…

  • Three Breweries Before the Civil War · 10.2 mi

    You would never guess it from the quiet crossroads today, but in the 1850s New Ulm was a surprisingly busy little industrial town. For a small farm settlement, the list of what it supported is remarkable: six general…

  • The Gymnasts and the Green-Coated Riflemen · 10.2 mi

    The German settlers of New Ulm did not just farm and brew, they brought their clubs, and two of them say a lot about the old country. The first was a Turnverein, an athletic and gymnastics society where men did…

  • The Living Chemistry Behind New Ulm’s Beer · 10.2 mi

    New Ulm ran three breweries back in the 1850s, and those little brewhouses were quietly running some serious science, decades before anyone in town would have called it that. The heart of brewing is fermentation, and…

  • Five Wars in One Small Graveyard, and the Records Burned · 10.2 mi

    The New Ulm Cemetery sits up where the old town used to be, before the railroad pulled everything a mile south in 1892. The graveyard did not move. It stayed with the dead. The oldest burial anybody can document here is…

  • An 1842 House That Outlasted Three Families and Kept Its Painted Stairs · 10.2 mi

    Out on Post Oak Point Road there is a house older than the name of this town. F. B. Waddell built the front section and the loft around 1842, back when the German families were still arriving and the place was not…

  • Joseph L. Leshikar House · 10.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the first home built by Josef L. Leshikar and his four sons in this area. It went up in 1854, right after 33 Czech families, encouraged by a letter from Reverend Josef E. Bergman, began…

  • The Old Roesler Place · 10.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the Old Roesler Place. August Roesler came to Texas from Germany in the 1850s. In 1873, he built his first home right here, a simple frame house that became a popular stop for travelers…

  • New Ulm, TX · 10.2 mi

    New Ulm, Texas, isn't a place you'll find plastered across history books, but it's got a quiet charm and a few stories tucked away. It's the kind of town where the Czech and German roots run deep, evident in the names…

  • Ulm Got Einstein for Six Weeks · 10.2 mi

    Since this town is named New Ulm, here is the old Ulm. It sits on the Danube in southern Germany, and its most famous export barely lived there. Albert Einstein was born in Ulm on the fourteenth of March, eighteen…

  • They Stopped Building the Church for 274 Years · 10.2 mi

    The church in Ulm, Germany took more than five hundred years to finish, and the reason is better than slow work. They started in thirteen seventy seven. They quit in fifteen forty three with the steeple standing at…

  • The Sparrow That Taught Ulm How to Carry a Beam · 10.2 mi

    Ulm, Germany has a mascot, and it is a sparrow, and the town has been telling the same story about why for centuries. As the legend goes, the builders were hauling long timber beams into the city to put up the great…

  • The Mayor Swears an Oath, Then the Whole Town Floats Away · 10.2 mi

    Once a year in Ulm, Germany, the mayor stands up in public and renews a medieval promise: to govern the rich and the poor alike, the same, by the same rules. It is an old oath and he has to say it out loud where…

  • The Oldest Imaginary Creature We Know Of Is in Ulm · 10.2 mi

    The museum in Ulm, Germany holds an object that ought to be more famous than it is. It is called the Lion-Man. It is a small figure carved out of mammoth ivory, with the body of a person and the head of a lion, and it…

  • McGregor Cemetery (Scottish Presbyterian Cemetery) · 10.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Nelsonville, heading past the McGregor Cemetery. This quiet spot is the last physical reminder of a wave of Scottish immigrants who arrived in the early 1850s. Many of these pioneers hailed from…

  • The Crooked House Has Been Leaning Since 1443 · 10.2 mi

    There is a building in Ulm, Germany called the Crooked House, and it has earned the name. It went up in fourteen forty three, on the edge of a canal, and over the centuries it has tilted out over the water at an angle…

  • Ulm Built Boats Meant to Be Destroyed at the Far End · 10.2 mi

    Ulm, Germany used to build a boat you were never supposed to bring home. They were called Ulm Boxes, plain wooden riverboats, and they carried goods and emigrants down the Danube toward Hungary. Going downstream on a…

  • The Cigar Maker and the Outlaws · 10.3 mi

    Every small town keeps a couple of stories that are too good to leave out and too thinly documented to swear by, and New Ulm has two beauties. The first: as the local story is told, a young Richard King, the man who…

  • Star Hill Cemetery · 10.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Star Hill Cemetery, a burial ground with roots stretching back to the earliest days of Texas settlement. Bryan Daughtrey, a War of 1812 veteran, arrived in Texas in 1822 and settled here in 1829.…

  • Liedertafel · 10.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising through Sealy, and right here is the site of a place that was the heart of German culture in this town. Back in 1899, some of Sealy's earliest German settlers formed a singing society called the…

  • The Best of the Four: Sealy in 1995 · 10.5 mi

    Sealy won four straight Class 3A state championships from 1994 through 1997 — 36-15 over Atlanta, 21-20 over Commerce, 36-27 over Tatum, 28-21 over Commerce again — becoming the first UIL eleven-man program ever to win…

  • The 1956 Championship That Isn't in the UIL Column · 10.5 mi

    Sealy is credited with five state football championships — 1978, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997 — but the town won another one in 1956 that does not appear in the UIL record book, because it was not a UIL championship.…

  • New Ulm, TX · 10.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through New Ulm, Texas, a community with roots stretching back to 1841 when it was known as Duff's Settlement. But the real story here is the wave of German immigrants who arrived in 1845, transforming…

  • Wolters, Jacob Franklin · 10.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Jacob Franklin Wolters, legislator and soldier, son of Theodore Henry and Margaret (Wink) Wolters, was born near New Ulm, Texas, on September 2, 1871. He attended public schools in Schulenburg and Add-Ran College (later…

  • William Shelburne Cemetery · 10.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the William Shelburne Cemetery, established in 1878. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2002.

  • Lesikar, Josef Lidumil · 10.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site related to Josef Lidumil Lesikar, a tailor who became a voice for freedom. Born in 1806 along the Czech-Moravian border, Lesikar was involved in the revolution of 1848, speaking out for…

  • New Ulm · 10.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're cruising through Austin County, and right here is the site of New Ulm. It wasn't always called that, though. Back in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1841</say-as>, this was Duff's Settlement, named for…

  • Sealy Cemetery · 10.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Sealy Cemetery, the final resting place for thousands of Sealy's earliest residents. It all began in 1879 when George Sealy bought over 11,000 acres to build a railroad depot. The town of Sealy grew…

  • New Ulm Cemetery · 10.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past New Ulm Cemetery, a resting place for many who shaped this area. It began near the original Duff's Settlement, named for James C. Duff who acquired the land in 1841. The earliest recorded burial here…

  • Frnka Family Cemetery · 10.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Frnka Family Cemetery. In 1926, Jan Jindrich and Cecilie Frnka set aside this land for a family burial ground. Most of their thirteen children and their spouses are buried here, in a cemetery…

  • The Town That Moved to the Tracks · 10.7 mi

    Here is a fact that sounds like a tall tale but is true: New Ulm picked itself up and moved. For its first forty years the town sat about a mile north of where you are now, up near what is today the New Ulm Cemetery.…

  • The Mattress That Put Sealy's Name in Bedrooms Worldwide · 10.8 mi

    The brick factory ahead of you on North Hardeman Street is the reason millions of people sleep on a word they don't realize is a Texas town. A cotton-gin builder named Daniel Haynes arrived in Sealy in 1881, and by 1885…

  • How Daniel Haynes Re-Engineered the Cotton Mattress · 10.8 mi

    The real innovation behind the Sealy name was a manufacturing problem solved with machinery, and it happened right here. Nineteenth-century mattresses were stuffed with loose cotton, wool, or feathers, and without…

  • Haynes Mattress Factory · 10.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Sealy, and right here is where a mattress revolution happened! In 1885, Daniel Haynes invented a whole new way to make mattresses – a felted cotton, non-tufted kind. He trademarked it under his…

  • The Mattress from Sealy · 10.9 mi

    The most famous thing to ever come out of Sealy started not in a boardroom, but around a cotton gin. Daniel Haynes came to town in 1881 building and repairing gins when a neighbor asked him to make a mattress. Haynes,…

  • The Town San Felipe's 'No' Built · 10.9 mi

    Sealy exists because the older town next door said no. In the 1870s, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway offered to route its new line through historic San Felipe de Austin, the first Anglo capital of Texas, just up…

  • The Giant Wooden Turntable That Spun Locomotives · 10.9 mi

    Early Sealy was not just a place where trains stopped, it was a place where trains were fixed. The railroad built a roundhouse, machine shops, and a giant wooden turntable, and the turntable is the part worth picturing.…

  • Three Blows in Eighteen Months · 10.9 mi

    In the space of about a year and a half, Sealy got knocked down three times. First, a disastrous Brazos River flood swept the area in 1899. Then in January 1900, the railroad that had created the town moved its Santa Fe…

  • The Sealy Tiger's Legend · 10.9 mi

    In Texas, high school football is a very big deal, and in 1978 nobody was bigger than Sealy's own Eric Dickerson. Before he became a superstar at SMU and a Hall of Fame running back in the NFL, he was the heart of the…

  • The Engineering of a Good Night's Sleep · 10.9 mi

    The world-famous Sealy mattress got its name from this town, and the town got its name from George Sealy, a director of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad. The mattress itself came out of a local problem. In 1881…

  • The Heart of the Texas Czech Belt · 10.9 mi

    If you're driving through Sealy on the right weekend, you might still hear a polka coming out of a hall. This is Czech and German country, settled in the last half of the nineteenth century by immigrants from Bohemia,…

  • Bostick, Dr. James West · 10.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Dr. James West Bostick's home in Sealy. Born around 1840 in a log cabin, Bostick was the grandson of one of Stephen F. Austin's original 300 settlers. After serving four years in the…

  • Sealy · 10.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're rolling through Sealy, a town born and built by the railroad. Back in 1879, the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad laid its tracks right here, naming the new settlement after railroad president George Sealy.…

  • Haynes-Felcman House · 10.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Haynes-Felcman House, built between 1901 and 1902. It started as the home of H. Schumacher, but in 1906, Richard H. Haynes bought it. Haynes, along with his father, founded the Haynes Mattress…

  • Saddleback Saloon: Eat Inside the Movie Set · 11.0 mi

    The Saddleback Saloon is worth a stop as much for the walls as for the plate. It lives inside the Preibisch Building, the oldest commercial building in downtown Sealy, put up in the late 1880s by a furniture dealer who…

  • Wolf Pack: Wood Fire in an Old Feed Store · 11.0 mi

    Wolf Pack Woodfired Tavern is the newer favorite in Sealy, and it leans hard into where it lives, a converted old feed store downtown by the rail line, original plank siding and hardwood floors still in place. The…

  • Death Stalks the Highway at the Katy Crossing · 11.0 mi

    The railroad crossing you're near, where State Highway 36 meets the old Katy line in downtown Sealy, once earned a headline the Sealy News almost never used. In 1943 the front page ran the words, "Death stalks the…

  • The Town That Fought Its Own Fires · 11.0 mi

    Downtown Sealy has leaned on its volunteers for a long time. The fire department here was chartered back in 1930 by the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions Club, and the American Legion, and for decades it was ordinary…

  • Trinity Lutheran Church · 11.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Trinity Lutheran Church in Sealy. Organized in 1883 by Reverend John Trinklein, the congregation was largely of German heritage. The church dedicated its first building in 1886 and has since expanded…

  • Firm Is Not the Same as Healthy · 11.1 mi

    You're in Sealy, where the famous mattress name began, so here's the mattress tangent: mattress firmness is not a universal medical ranking. Body weight, body shape, sleeping position, pain, mobility, and preference…

  • How Sealy Became a Mattress Name · 11.1 mi

    You're in Sealy, where the famous mattress name began, so here's the mattress tangent: Daniel Haynes arrived in the railroad town of Sealy in eighteen eighty one and began making cotton-filled mattresses. A cotton-gin…

  • When the Mattress Became a Machine · 11.1 mi

    You're in Sealy, where the famous mattress name began, so here's the mattress tangent: innerspring construction turned a stuffed pad into an engineered support system. Networks of metal coils compress under load and…

  • Memory Foam Came From Impact Research · 11.1 mi

    You're in Sealy, where the famous mattress name began, so here's the mattress tangent: the material now called memory foam grew from aerospace work on energy-absorbing cushioning and impact protection. It is a…

  • The Tag You Are Allowed to Remove · 11.1 mi

    You're in Sealy, where the famous mattress name began, so here's the mattress tangent: the intimidating mattress label usually says it must not be removed except by the consumer. The warning targets manufacturers,…

  • A Recycling Puzzle the Size of a Bed · 11.1 mi

    You're in Sealy, where the famous mattress name began, so here's the mattress tangent: a mattress combines fabric, foam, fiber, steel, wood, adhesives, and sometimes electronics or air components. That mixture makes…

Explore Cat Spring on the Map
All music from Texas → Find another town Vote on city songs

Sign up for the free newsletter

Longer stories, research notes, photos, videos, and where the road goes next. Free, and no iPhone needed.

Subscribe free