Christian Dietert Mill

Dietert was born near Magdeburg in 1827 and settled in Comfort in 1854. There he and Nicolaus Zink built Perseverance Mill on Cypress Creek for Ernst Hermann Altgelt; a flood soon destroyed it and drought idled the replacement. At Kerrville he and Balthasar Lich set a low diagonal dam across the river where it never went dry, doing away with a millrace. Dietert was postmaster from 1867 to 1882 and county judge during part of Reconstruction, and local history credits him and his wife Rosalie with bringing the waltz and the Christmas tree to town.

What the plaque says

Christian Dietert Mill German millwright Christian Dietert built mills at Comfort and Fredericksburg before moving here in 1857. With the assistance of a young German miller named Balthasar Lich, he constructed a mill and dam near this site to serve the pioneer settlers of the community, then called Kerrsville. Dietert's Guadalupe River milling operation played an important role in the growth of Kerrville by processing crops and providing lumber for area homes and buildings. The business was later bought and enlarged by Captain Charles Schreiner, a prominent local merchant. (1981) Incise on base: Sponsored by Herring Printing Company

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — steps away
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Treue der Union Monument — 14 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 19 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Frontier Times Museum — 22 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

More markers nearby

• Kerrville Telephone Company — steps away
• Notre Dame Catholic Church — steps away
• Notre Dame Catholic School — steps away
• Kerrville Mountain Sun — steps away