Agricultural Society of Fischer

Fischer grew up as a supply stop on the Devil's Backbone section of the road between San Marcos and Blanco. Potters Creek School opened in 1875, a year before the post office, and Fischer Store School replaced it in 1888; after World War II Fischer became the center of a school district for northern Comal County. Postal officials changed the name twice, to Fischer Store in 1894 and to Fischer in 1950, and by the 1960s the Fischer family had held the postmastership continuously since 1876. In 1967 Fischer was still a crossroads store and post office.

What the plaque says

Agricultural Society of Fischer In 1853, Hermann and Otto Fischer arrived in the area as some of the first pioneer settlers. Hermann farmed, ranched and then decided to use his formal training to open a mercantile business in 1866 named Fischer's Store. To accommodate the growing agricultural population of the area, Fischer's Store offered a variety of ranching and farming supplies. Eventually, the town became known as Fischer. In 1875, an agricultural society formed to act as a cooperative or association to negotiate feed prices, trade excesses, share farming and ranching knowledge and to assist each other during harvest. The society also functioned to provide social gatherings for local farmers and their families, usually in the form of barn or open-air dances. Originally named the Agricultural Society of Fischerdale, the name was changed when the post office was officially approved in 1876. After many years of meeting in temporary locations, Otto Fischer sold for ten dollars a portion of his land to the Society. In 1897, they built a hall to serve as a meeting place, dance hall and general gathering place for the community. Tradition attributes the current 1908 hall, designed with laminated pine arches to vault the ceiling, to a man named Kloepper from New Braunfels. Other sub-organizations formed later such as the Fischer Store Fair Association and the Fischer Bowling Club, that met in a bowling alley added to the property in 1897, built by John Lueders. Other events held on the property include a rodeo, barbeques, an oyster fry, ice cream socials, weddings and more. With an economy based on small farms, the Agricultural Society not only provided a collective knowledge and interest in farming and ranching, but also a place to bolster community spirit and togetherness. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gruene Historic District — 19 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 20 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 21 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 21 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.

More markers nearby

• German Pioneers in Texas — 9.1 mi
• Startzville Community — 9.5 mi
• Wimberley Mills — 9.8 mi
• John Henry Saunders Homestead — 9.9 mi