New Braunfels Schuetzen Verein

The club's best-known contest is simple to describe. Each shooter fires ten shots at a 25-ring target 100 yards away, and whoever puts the most near the center is proclaimed Schuetzen-Koenig. The first king, in 1850, is believed to have been Carl Dosch. Women could not shoot at first and later competed as associate members for the title of queen; Hilda Rahe was the first, in 1949, and women did not gain full voting membership until the mid-1970s. In the Civil War only three members turned out in 1862 and 1863, firing two or three shots each.

What the plaque says

New Braunfels Schuetzen Verein The New Braunfels Schuetzen Verein organized in 1849 as one of the nation's early shooting clubs. German immigrants founded the town only four years earlier in 1845 and brought the tradition of target shooting to America from their homeland. The need to provide food and protect homes also necessitated the practice in the New Braunfels area, as many early settlers joined the organization. As the city of New Braunfels grew, the Schuetzen Verein moved several times to avoid residential areas. The club moved in the years prior to World War I and then again when New Braunfels doubled in size in the years after World War II. It was also during this time that the Mission Valley Schuetzen Verein merged with New Braunfels' club. In the following decades, New Braunfels continued to grow, especially as it became part of an extended metropolitan area. With the city's continued expansion, the shooting club relocated again. The Schuetzen Verein's most important event is the Koenig (King) matches held annually since before the Civil War. An important tradition in the community, members continued it even through the ammunition shortages of the Civil War and World War I, sometimes firing only once each to maintain status of the organization. After more than 150 years of existence, the New Braunfels Schuetzen Verein continues to meet, serving as a reminder of the town's German heritage and historic past. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natural Bridge Caverns — 7.4 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.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 7.4 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 — 7.8 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 — 21 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

• Mission Hill — 4.9 mi
• Mission Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe — 5.0 mi
• Slumber Falls Camp — 5.5 mi
• Site of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Mission - Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission — 6.3 mi