Julius Bremer Family and Rebecca Creek School

Bremer's neighborhood lies partly under water now. Cranes Mill, the crossing community named for J. B. Crain, who built a mill at Gum Spring in the early 1850s, disappeared beneath Canyon Lake when it began filling in the 1960s. The Corps of Engineers had taken almost 2,000 acres of the surrounding ranch between 1961 and 1963. The Rebecca Creek school the Bremers helped found was eventually consolidated with the Sherwood district, and the ranch's later owners preserved the Bremers' rock house ruins and family cemetery before the land was sold for a subdivision in 1999.

What the plaque says

Julius Bremer Family and Rebecca Creek School Julius August Hermann Bremer (1848-1894) was an early settler on land that is now part of the Mystic Shores neighborhood. He was born in Comal County to German immigrants who, in 1845, were among the Adelsverein's first founders of New Braunfels. In 1867, at age 19, Julius claimed his land grant of 160 acres near Cranes Mill. The following year, he married German immigrant Emma Amalie Foerster (1850-1923). Between 1869 and 1892, they had nine children; eight survived. The family built a two-story stone house, located at this site. They raised livestock, farmed and provided butcher and dairy services. The Bremers expanded their land holdings to 1,069 acres. Five family members were buried in a family cemetery near this site. In 1882, Julius deeded 5.4 acres of land west of his home for a school and served as a school trustee. The one-room Rebecca Creek School, built of wood, opened that same year. Students walked or rode horses or mules from both sides of the Guadalupe River to attend first through eighth grades. Albert Wunderlich (1853-1889) served as the first teacher from 1882 to 1888, living in the log teacherage. His maternal grandfather, Joachim Pantermuehl, founded the Rebecca Creek settlement in 1854. After nearly 60 years in operation, the school closed in 1941. In 2002, the Comal Independent School District honored the 1882 school's contributions and heritage by naming a new Rebecca Creek Elementary School nearby. (2020)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natural Bridge Caverns — 16 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 18 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.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 20 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.
• 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

• 711 Ranch — 1.4 mi
• Benedict and Anetta Kaderli Family — 1.7 mi
• Fischer Homestead — 3.7 mi
• Agricultural Society of Fischer — 4.6 mi