First Patented Wire Fence

The mill site became one of the Southwest's favorite resorts. Joseph Landa's son Harry turned the family's springs into a picnic ground, and in 1897 Helen Gould, daughter of the financier Jay Gould, urged the International and Great Northern to build a spur into it. Excursion trains brought crowds from San Antonio and Austin to Landa's Park, with its spring-fed pool and ballpark, where Dizzy Dean once played for the local Tigers. After the Depression closed the park in 1933, voters approved bonds three to one, and the city bought it in 1936 for $80,000.

What the plaque says

First Patented Wire Fence [Special fence design at top of inscription] Virgina native William H. Meriwether (b. 1800), an early Comal County plantation owner, ran a sawmill, cotton gin and gristmill at this site. As an agriculturalist, he was aware of the need for an economical and practical source of fencing material. His interest led to the development of smooth wire and board fence that effectively resisted the temperature changes that had been so damaging to earlier wire fences. His invention known as snake wire fencing, was awarded patent No.10211 on November 8, 1853. It was the first patent for wire fence issued in the United States. Although not widely accepted, Meriwether's fence was an important step in the development of an economical fencing material. It also played a role in later wire fence patent disputes. Meriwether sold his mill site to German native Joseph Landa in 1859 and moved to Tennessee, where he died in 1861. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 0.7 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 2.8 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 — 13 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 — 18 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.

More markers nearby

• Wurstfest — 0.2 mi
• The Church of Saints Peter and Paul — 0.2 mi
• New Braunfels Academy — 0.3 mi
• New Braunfels: County Seat of Comal County — 0.4 mi