Felix von Blucher

Blücher's maps began as a refugee's job. He studied law, surveying and languages at Berlin, then fled Prussia in 1845 over his political views. On July 11, 1849, he and his wife landed at Corpus Christi, and two days later he began surveying for Henry Kinney. His territory kept growing: Nueces County surveyor in 1852, Cameron County in 1858, Live Oak in 1860. In the early 1870s he and his two oldest sons surveyed a narrow-gauge railroad from Corpus Christi to Laredo. He died in 1879 while surveying for Richard King, leaving field books on South Texas.

What the plaque says

Felix von Blucher German native Anton Felix Hans Hellmuth von Blucher (1819-1879) came to the United States in 1844, arriving in New Orleans. The following year he moved to Texas and joined the German settlers at New Braunfels. Trained in engineering, languages, and law, he served as an interpreter and surveyor. In 1847 he assisted the colony leader, John O. Meusebach, in the negotiation of a treaty with Comanche Indians that opened the Fisher-Miller land grant to settlement. In 1849, following his service in the Mexican War, Von Blucher returned to Germany and married Maria Imme (d. 1893). The same year they moved to Nueces County and settled on land at this site. One year later he mapped a trade route to Eagle Pass on the Mexican border. In 1852 he became county surveyor, an office he held until his death. He also served as city alderman, 1852-56. During the Civil War Von Blucher joined the Confederacy and designed and directed the placement of fortifications in Corpus Christi and the South Texas coastal area. After his death in 1879, his children built homes here on family land, which became known as Blucherville. For over 100 years, 1852-1954, family members served as county surveyors and cartographers of the region. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.6 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 1.4 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 1.6 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 1.7 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• LULAC — steps away
• Site of Cheston L. Heath School — steps away
• Confederate Army Deserters Hanged in Corpus Christi — 0.2 mi
• Site of Kinney's Trading Post — 0.2 mi