Navarro School

The school served Geronimo, a community that began as a social center for German settlers. Robert Bretzke, William Kuehne, Earnest Staudman and August Weinert were among those who moved here from Schumansville in 1860, and the community took its name from Geronimo Creek. A post office opened in 1891, when Geronimo had a general store, a cotton gin and twenty residents. In 1904 forty students attended its one-teacher school. By 1945 Geronimo had two gins and 123 residents; its population was 279 in 1968, 250 in 1990 and 619 in 2000.

What the plaque says

Navarro School The original Navarro School, named for early Texas leader Jose Antonio Navarro, was a one-room building located about one-half mile northeast of this site in 1889. A second structure was added in the early 1900s. In 1912 the Navarro Agricultural High School was built on land purchased from L. H. Heinemeyer. It was replaced in 1953 by new elementary and high school facilities on this site. Sports and other extra-curricular activities were established as the school grew. For over a century Navarro School has served students in the Geronimo area. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 9.9 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 — 10 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.
• 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.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 23 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.

More markers nearby

• Jose Antonio Navarro Ranch — 1.1 mi
• Site of Dietz Community — 4.7 mi
• Clear Spring Hall and Store — 5.8 mi
• Juan Seguin School — 5.8 mi