New Braunfels Woolen Mill

The mill's wool came off the county's own sheep. Comal County clipped 621 pounds of raw wool in 1850 and 72,000 pounds by 1890, and a company to manufacture woolen goods was organized in New Braunfels in 1867, a year before this building changed hands. John F. Torrey had already brought looms and machinery to town during the Civil War to make cotton cloth. By the early 1880s textile factories along the Comal were shipping cotton and woolen products, and by 1930 the county's goats outnumbered its sheep, 22,176 to 15,457.

What the plaque says

New Braunfels Woolen Mill German immigrants August Tolle and Dr. Theodor Koester purchased lots 271 and 272 in 1864 and built a large two-story building 100 feet long and 60 feet wide using hewn trunks of cedar. The building was built as a brandy distillery and to manufacture medicinals. In 1868, the building was sold to the New Braunfels Woolen Mill Manufacturing Company. The factory utilized the Comal River water for steam power installing a boiler, chimney and warning bell. The company was successful, but lacking a trademark, closed because other manufacturers used the name and produced inferior products. In 1901, German immigrants Franz and Anna (Mielke) Popp bought the property and converted the building to the Comal Steam Laundry. It was the first laundry in New Braunfels and capitalized on the turn of the century desire for cleanliness and reducing the laborious task for citizens to wash their clothes. After Franz retired in 1913, the laundry was run by Anna and her children, Emma, Martha, Rosa and Bruno. During the great depression, Emma operated the laundry and also worked as a cook at the Phoenix Café to support her children. In 1934, the laundry closed due to a kerosene stove fire that resulted in Anna's death. The building that had been a New Braunfels landmark for so many years was razed in 1954. The Popp family still owned the property in the early 21st century. Although all that remains of the building is the old bell, rock foundation and part of the chimney, it serves as a reminder of business ingenuity utilizing the Comal River. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 0.4 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 — 2.7 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 — steps away
• Johann Michael Jahn — steps away
• Texas Germans in the Civil War — 0.2 mi
• Eiband and Fischer General Mercantile — 0.3 mi