Original Gruene Mercantile

The buildings along the old store road were nearly lost in the 1970s, when developers planned to clear the town for houses. Cheryle Fuller drew up a development plan and a historical survey in 1974, and the town reached the National Register the next year. In 1977 Bill Gallagher and Pat Molak used a $20,000 loan to buy several of the buildings, and Molak and Mary Jane Nalley restored them with little structural change, keeping the old signs, stage and forty-eight-star flag in the dance hall. George Strait played there regularly in the 1970s and 1980s.

What the plaque says

Original Gruene Mercantile Founded in 1878 by Henry D. Gruene to serve the families working on his cotton farm, the original Gruene Mercantile served many purpose for the community. In addition to providing food, clothing, household goods and farm implements, the store was a stage stop and a post office. It was also used as a distribution point for H. D. Gruene's distillery, selling his Green River brand whiskey. The wooden bulding was removed to site in 1904 when a new two-story red brick mercantile structure was erected on the original site across the street. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gruene Historic District — steps away
  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.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 3.1 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.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 15 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 — 15 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

• Gruene — steps away
• Ferdinand J. Lindheimer — 1.8 mi
• New Braunfels — 2.3 mi
• Comal County — 2.5 mi