Schiege Cigar Factory

The one-room factory outlived its trade by decades. Schiege sold his hand-rolled cigars across Texas under labels that included the Texas Star and LaRosa Suprema, and his workers took their meals with the Schiege family. The building stayed with three generations of the family, then became part of the Round Top Inn, opened in 1991; by 2014 guests ate breakfast in the old factory room, with a sleeping loft above. Texas Tech's College of Architecture photographed it for its teaching collection and filed the image with a cautious question mark after the name.

What the plaque says

Schiege Cigar Factory By 1859 the U.S. was importing 900 million cigars yearly, mainly from Germany. Tariffs, levied on imported cigars beginning 1862, resulted in a dramatic increase in domestic cigar manufacturing. Tobacco was still an important cash crop when Charles Schiege, Jr., erected a one-room frame cigar factory here in 1882. The factory's roadside facade bore a sign reading "Segars & Tobaccos." Factory workers made the cigars by hand and mainly from U.S. domestic tobaccos. Schiege marketed his cigars under a variety of labels, including "Texas Star," until 1932 when he closed the factory. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Round Top and Festival Hill — 0.2 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 15 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 16 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 18 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.

More markers nearby

• Pochmann House — steps away
• Schiege House — steps away
• Wandke House — steps away
• Early Texas Hotels and Inns — 0.2 mi