Lund

Lund grew as an extension of the New Sweden settlement about four miles west. Its first settlers were N. M. Anderson, August Thornquist and Gustaf Seaholm, and the post office opened in 1899. P. V. Nelson, Nels Ankarstolpe and J. E. Rivers gave the congregation 1 1/2 acres, with another acre for a graveyard. The first school, twenty-five feet square, opened in 1894. In 1896 Carl and Fred Bergman wrote their sisters in Sweden that only Swedes lived for sixteen miles west, while to the east lived "a strange mixture." The rich farmland produced large crops.

What the plaque says

Lund First known as Pleasant Hill, this community was settled by Swedish immigrants in the late 1880s. The name of the settlement eventually was changed to Lund in honor of a city in southern Sweden. Under the leadership of the Rev. J.A. Stamline, the Swedish Evangelical Bethlehem Lutheran Church was founded on January 16, 1897. The Lund community included homes, farms, cotton gins, a general store, blacksmith shop, post office, and school. A tornado destroyed the church building on April 7, 1980. A new structure was built and dedicated in 1981. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 21 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 22 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 22 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 22 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.

More markers nearby

• City of Elgin Centennial, 1872-1972 — 3.6 mi
• Carlson — 3.7 mi
• Elgin Lodge No. 328, A. F. & A. M. — 4.2 mi
• Manda — 4.3 mi