Town of Quihi

Bandera, TX

The name Bandera traces to eighteenth-century clashes between the Spanish army and Lipan Apaches at the nearby pass, but the town itself began in the 1840s when Charles de Montel, John James, and John Hunter Herndon surveyed and purchased land along the Medina River. A Mormon colony arrived in 1854, followed by Polish immigrants whose hand-cut limestone buildings still stand, and settlers of many nations soon joined them. In 1856 the Texas Legislature made Bandera the seat of its new county.

Bandera, TX

The Bandera area was a strategic point on the Indian frontier, where Rangers and Comanches clashed in 1843 amid the contested borderlands of the young Republic. Settlement came quickly thereafter: Elder Lyman Wight established a Mormon colony in 1854, Polish immigrants arrived in 1855, and the county was created and organized out of Bexar in 1856. The seat of Bandera had been founded in 1853 by John James, Charles de Montel, and John Herndon.

Dunlay, TX

German immigrant Henry Schuehle built this one-and-a-half-story limestone cottage in 1850 on land he bought in Medina County. In 1900 it passed to the Saathoff family, who had come to Texas from Germany in 1846 and helped found the nearby settlement of Quihi, and who lived here for about 75 years while active in public education. Its native-stone construction reflects the practical building traditions the German settlers carried to the Texas Hill Country frontier.

Hondo, TX

This spot on the old San Antonio Road was long known as Soldaten Kemp — "soldiers' camp" — a rendezvous for frontier patrols and freighters before German immigrants made it home. Rev. John Schaper organized a Methodist congregation here in 1858, and by 1860 a church stood on the site. In 1871 members deeded land for a new building, which pastor and stonemason Jacob Bader raised from native stone with his parishioners' help; for years it served as the community's only meeting hall.