Guadalupe County

Archaeologists date some artifacts here to the Archaic period, and Tonkawas, Lipan Apaches, Karankawas and Comanches later used the land. Between 1827 and 1835 twenty-two families arrived as part of DeWitt's colony, only to retreat to Gonzales during Indian raids and the Runaway Scrape. A ranger company under John Coffee Hays camped at Walnut Springs. The Republic organized a judicial county here in 1842, but it was discontinued when the courts struck such counties down. The county of 1846 covered 862 square miles until Blanco and Wilson counties took land.

What the plaque says

Guadalupe County; formed from Gonzales and Bexar counties; created March 30, 1846. Organized July 13,1846; named for the Guadalupe River, to which this name was given by Alonso De Leon in 1689; Seguin, the county seat named in honor of Juan Nepomuceno Seguin 1806-1890.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 12 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 — 13 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 — 22 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 — 23 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

• Texas Lutheran College — 0.7 mi
• Colonel Nathaniel Benton — 1.1 mi
• Juan Seguin School — 1.6 mi
• Black Education in Seguin — 1.7 mi