Slumber Falls Camp
New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Located on the Guadalupe River Road four miles northwest of the city of New Braunfels, this area has been a popular swimming and picnicking site since the late 1800s. In the 1930s, Harry Landa sold 20 acres in the Veramendi survey to W.V. & Francis Schulz Lillie and it was developed into a tourist court. Mrs. Lillie and her brother, Herman Schrader, built 11 cabins one at a time as they could afford them. Advertised as “paradise of the hills,” the camp was a popular tourist destination during a rapid increase in automobile tourism, particularly along River Road. The camp was a place to get away from the city and enjoy the beauty of a hill country river. Drought conditions closed the site as a tourist camp in 1957. As early as 1956, the Texas synod of the evangelical and reformed church (United Church of Christ) voted to seek a campsite for youth and adult activities. The wooded site with 11 cabins on limestone cliffs with majestic views overlooking the Guadalupe River was chosen. The property was purchased on December 31, 1957. Slumber Falls Camp, named for the peaceful and serene falls on the river, opened in the summer of 1958 with 385 campers and 100 staff. The camp facilities expanded and evolved into a beautiful naturally-landscaped camp with updated facilities while maintaining several of the original tourist court cabins for a 1930s camping experience. The camp continues the tradition of providing a memorable camping and learning experience for youth and adults where they can slumber with the sound of waterfalls.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This bend of the Guadalupe River has drawn swimmers and picnickers since the late 1800s, and in the 1930s it was developed into a tourist court whose eleven cabins were built one at a time and advertised as a 'paradise of the hills.' Automobile travelers flocked to it during the boom in car tourism along River Road until drought closed the camp in 1957. The United Church of Christ bought the site and reopened it in 1958 as Slumber Falls Camp, still serving youth and adults today.
Why it matters
It captures the rise of automobile-era leisure travel and the reuse of a Depression tourist court as a lasting summer camp.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Some places have always known what they were for. This bend of the Guadalupe River, four miles up the River Road from New Braunfels, has drawn people to its cool water and shaded banks since the late 1800s — a swimming hole and picnic ground before it was ever a business. In the Hill Country heat, a clear river running over limestone is its own kind of treasure.
What changed the site was the automobile. In the 1920s and 1930s, cars put ordinary Americans on the road for pleasure in numbers never seen before, and a whole roadside economy sprang up to serve them: filling stations, diners, and the humble "tourist court" — a cluster of cabins where a traveling family could stop for the night. River Road, with its scenery and its swimming, was made for exactly this kind of getaway.
The timing cuts two ways, though. The tourist court here was developed in the 1930s — during the Great Depression, when money was scarce and every dollar counted. That it grew at all is a small testament to how deeply Americans had come to love the open road, and to the patient, pay-as-you-go grit of the people who built it.
People & events
In the 1930s, Harry Landa sold twenty acres in the old Veramendi survey to W. V. and Francis Schulz Lillie, and the tourist court took shape. Mrs. Lillie and her brother, Herman Schrader, built its eleven cabins the honest way — one at a time, as they could afford them. There is a whole philosophy of Depression-era enterprise in that phrase: no loan-fueled grand opening, just steady work and a cabin added whenever the money allowed.
They advertised it as a "paradise of the hills," and travelers agreed, flocking up River Road to swim, picnic, and escape the city for a few days beside a beautiful river. For a couple of decades the little camp thrived on the rising tide of automobile tourism — until nature closed it. Drought conditions shut the tourist court down in 1957.
But the site's story simply turned a page. As early as 1956, the Texas synod of the Evangelical and Reformed Church — part of the United Church of Christ — had been searching for a place to host youth and adult activities. This wooded property, with its eleven cabins perched on limestone cliffs above the water, was exactly what they wanted. They bought it on the last day of 1957, and in the summer of 1958 it reopened as Slumber Falls Camp, named for the gentle falls nearby. That first season welcomed 385 campers and 100 staff — a swimming hole reborn as a place of learning and community.
Its place in the American story
Slumber Falls Camp tells the American story of the open road in one small property. The tourist court was a genuinely new institution of the twentieth century, invented to serve a nation that had fallen in love with the automobile. These roadside cabin camps were the ancestors of the motels every traveler knows today, and they democratized travel — putting a night away and a river swim within reach of ordinary families, not just the wealthy who once rode the rails to grand resorts.
The site also captures something Americans have always been good at: reuse and reinvention. When drought ended the camp's first life, the buildings did not simply rot. A church community saw new purpose in the same cabins and cliffs, and turned a Depression-era tourist court into a lasting summer camp — part of the long tradition of organized camping that has shaped American childhood for generations.
That a single place could be a swimming hole, a paradise-of-the-hills auto camp, and a church retreat across a century and more is the larger lesson. Landscapes that people love rarely get abandoned; they get handed forward, each generation finding its own reason to gather at the water's edge.
If you visit
The heart of this place is the river, and it always has been. Listen for the falls that gave the camp its name and gave campers their peaceful sleep. Standing on the limestone cliffs above the Guadalupe, you're seeing the same view that pulled swimmers here in the late 1800s and travelers here in the 1930s — the reason every chapter of this site's story begins with the water.
Look for the original cabins. Several of the 1930s tourist-court structures have been deliberately kept among the updated facilities, preserved so visitors can feel what a "paradise of the hills" auto camp was really like. To stand in one is to touch the era when a family's road trip ended at a hand-built cabin above a river, one of eleven raised as money allowed.
Because it remains a working camp serving youth and adults, treat it as the active, welcoming place it is rather than a ruin to explore. Set against a Hill Country road trip, it's a reminder that the pleasures of River Road are more than a century old — the same clear water, the same shade, the same simple joy of getting away from the city and slumbering to the sound of a waterfall.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Themes & tags
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