John F. Torrey, Site of Early Mill and Factory

Torrey came to New Braunfels by way of the Indian trade. A Connecticut native, he and his brothers ran a Houston firm that traded with the tribes from 1838 to 1848, a business tied closely to Sam Houston's Indian policy, and he kept a tavern where San Marcos now stands, its guests said to be guarded from snakes by goats. In 1844 he contracted with John O. Meusebach to haul German immigrants from Indianola, then sold his teams to the society and opened a store. With Willis E. Parks he dammed the Comal in 1848 for turbine wheels.

What the plaque says

John F. Torrey, Site of Early Mill and Factory (1821- 1893) Pioneer promotor of Texas industry. He operated a flour, grist and saw mill, a sash, door and blind factory (1850), a cotton factory (1863) and the first woolen factory in Texas. With indomitable spirt he rebuilt the plant, after partail destruction by tornado and floods, until all was swept away.

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 — 2.4 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 — 17 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

• New Braunfels: County Seat of Comal County — 0.3 mi
• Comal County, C.S.A. — 0.3 mi
• The New Braunfels Herald — 0.3 mi
• Phoenix Saloon — 0.4 mi