Pflugerville

By the mid-1890s Pflugerville had 250 residents, who did their banking and shipping in Round Rock, eight miles northwest. The Katy line of 1904 passed just outside town, and within ten years the population doubled to 500. Several school districts consolidated with the Pflugerville high school in the early 1920s. After World War II people left for Austin, and by 1949 only 380 remained. The town incorporated in the 1960s, and from 1980 through 1988 it was the fastest-growing community in Texas. Its population reached 16,335 in 2000, and a new weekly, the Pflugerville Pflag, began in 1980.

What the plaque says

Pflugerville Henry Pfluger (1803-67), who migrated from Germany to Texas in 1849-50, moved his large family here in 1853. Other settlers joined them, and in 1872 a school was begun on Henry Lisso's farm. Immanuel Lutheran Church was founded in 1874. Primarily a farming settlement, Pflugerville had no commercial business until 1890, when Louis Bohls built a general store. A post office was opened there in 1893 with Bohls as postmaster. In 1891 two community organizations were formed: the German-American Mutual Assurance Association, to insure townspeople against natural disasters; and "Pflugerville Schuetzen and Kegel Verein," a shooting and bowling club. The village began to grow when the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad arrived in 1904. George Pfluger (1834-1910) and his son Albert (1878-1969) platted the townsite, and George donated land for a train depot and a school. Early businesses included drugstores, groceries, a hotel, grist mill, cotton gin, ice factory, and a blacksmith. In 1907 La Rue Noton and Archie Ward started a telephone system. Farmers State Bank, chartered in 1906, became First State Bank in 1933. A newspaper, "The Pflugerville Press," was published from 1907 until 1942. In 1958-62, the Pflugerville High School football team gained national fame by winning 55 consecutive games. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Bonnell — 12 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 12 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.
• Harry Ransom Center — 13 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 13 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.

More markers nearby

• St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church — 0.5 mi
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of Dessau — 2.9 mi
• The Gault Homestead — 3.4 mi
• St. John Church — 5.4 mi