Junction of Two Important Rivers, the Guadalupe and the Comal

Three days after he founded the presidio at San Antonio, Governor Martin de Alarcón was claiming this ground for the Spanish king. His assignment ran long: in 1718 he also visited six East Texas missions, finishing on November 21 and confiscating French merchandise. The names here shifted. Early Spanish accounts called the Comal the Little Guadalupe, until Rivera's 1727 report fixed the Guadalupe as the larger river. In October 1845 the first ferry across the Guadalupe was set where the rivers meet, said to carry the heaviest wagons. The marker stands in a private backyard.

What the plaque says

Junction of Two Important Rivers, the Guadalupe and the Comal Site claimed May 8, 1718, for King of Spain by Gov. Martin de Alarcon, and used by priests and army units in traffic to East Texas. In 1845, ferry here, run by Adolph von Wedemeyer, aided German immigrants settling Central Texas. In 1860s this was site of brick kiln and tannery. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 0.8 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 — 14 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

• Home of Ferdinand Lindheimer — 0.4 mi
• Texas Germans in the Civil War — 0.4 mi
• New Braunfels Woolen Mill — 0.4 mi
• Johann Michael Jahn — 0.5 mi