Sattler
Canyon Lake, Comal County, Texas
Marker Inscription
German immigrants were the first to colonize permanently this area along the Guadalupe River in the 1850s. The dispersed rural community was known at times as Marienthal, Walhalla and Mountain Valley, with the name Sattler assigned when the post office, first opened in 1856 at the Wilhelm Sattler home, was more centrally located in 1880. The Weil-Nowotny-Guenther store, with its complex of buildings-post office, dance hall, cotton gin and bowling alley-served as a gathering place for farm and ranch families who lived in the area. Construction of Canyon Dam in the 1960s hastened the dispersal of the German community, but the heritage of Sattler remains significant in the History of Comal County. (2002)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
German immigrants permanently settled this stretch of the Guadalupe River in the 1850s, giving their scattered community names like Marienthal, Walhalla, and Mountain Valley before it settled on Sattler for the family whose home first held the post office. A country store complex — with post office, dance hall, cotton gin, and bowling alley — became the gathering place for farm and ranch families. The building of Canyon Dam in the 1960s scattered the old community, but its German heritage endures in Comal County.
Why it matters
Sattler illustrates the German rural settlement of the Texas Hill Country and how a mid-20th-century public works project could reshape and disperse a community rooted in a century of tradition.
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Related people
- · Wilhelm Sattler
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
German Pioneers in Texas
Sattler vicinity, TX
Between 1844 and 1847 a society of German nobles, the Mainzer Adelsverein, sponsored the emigration of thousands of Germans to Texas, who founded New Braunfels in 1845 and Fredericksburg in 1846. Pushing west, these farmers, artisans, scholars, and scientists endured epidemic and privation, and a treaty with the Comanche opened millions of acres between the Llano and Colorado rivers to settlement. Much of the land they first settled now lies beneath Canyon Lake.
The Moeller House
New Braunfels, TX
Working entirely alone from 1859 to 1866, John George Moeller built this sturdy home in the German settlement of New Braunfels using hand-cut limestone, eighteen-foot cedar beams, and random-width cypress floors. The Moeller family lived here into the 20th century, followed by the Nowotnys. Its craftsmanship reflects the traditions German immigrants carried to the Texas Hill Country.
New Braunfels
New Braunfels, TX
New Braunfels was founded on March 21, 1845 by Carl, Prince of Solms-Braunfels, commissioner-general of the society organizing German immigration to Texas, and named for his estate on the Lahn River. His successor John O. Meusebach secured the colony's future, while officials, a pastor, and a teacher gave the new town its institutions. It became a cultural anchor of German Texas — home to Comal County, the New Braunfelser Zeitung (the state's oldest German newspaper, begun 1852), the first Staatssaengerfest, and, in 1856, the first special school tax collected in Texas.
Ullrich Home
New Braunfels, TX
This sturdy sand-brick house was raised in 1855 by George Ullrich, one of the German colonists who poured into central Texas under the Adelsverein emigration company. A decade earlier, in 1845, Ullrich had driven the first wagon of those settlers across the Guadalupe River—a small but vivid moment in the founding of New Braunfels.