Moos Homestead

Helotes, TX

Scottish surgeon Dr. George Frederick Marnoch bought more than 1,500 acres near Helotes Creek in 1858 and hired noted San Antonio builder John M. Fries—designer of the Menger Hotel—to raise this limestone house in 1859. Marnoch practiced medicine and raised livestock, and his son Gabriel, also a physician, became a respected naturalist who discovered new amphibian and reptile species in the Helotes Hills. The distinctive house, with its half-octagon bay towers, stayed in the family until 1947.

San Antonio, TX

Claus and Johanna Evers brought their children from Schleswig-Holstein to Texas in 1855 and settled on this land in 1874. The family cemetery began in 1877 when a stranger passing through fell ill and died at their home, soon followed by the burial of an infant granddaughter. Several generations of Evers and Braendle descendants now rest here, a quiet marker of the area's German pioneer heritage.

Helotes, TX

In the Texas Hill Country west of San Antonio, Swiss immigrants Anton and Marie Gugger were among the pioneers who settled the little crossroads of Helotes. Around 1881 their son Arnold raised this thick-walled limestone building on the bank of Helotes Creek, where it did triple duty as blacksmith shop, general store, and saloon while the family lived upstairs. It even served twice as the town post office, and its 18-inch rough-course walls still anchor the community more than a century later.

Leon Valley, TX

Settlement here began in 1858 when Joseph Huebner, an Austrian immigrant and San Antonio businessman, bought land and built limestone structures along the creek that still bears his name. He opened a stagecoach stop on the San Antonio–to–Bandera line, offering blacksmithing, fresh stock, and shelter to travelers stranded by the flooded creek. In 1930 the property passed to Judge John F. Onion and his wife Harriet, and grassroots preservation later saved the homestead as a natural and educational site.