Schumacher Crossing on the Guadalupe River

Fritz Tegener, one of the sawmill's builders, was a Prussian born about 1813 who came to Comfort in 1854. He sat on a petit jury panel in 1859, served as Kerr County treasurer from 1858 to 1860 and ran a gristmill and sawmill. In 1862 he led a party of Unionists toward Mexico and was badly wounded on the way; his granddaughter later said he spent the rest of the war in Mexico as a gold miner. Back in Texas, he represented Kerr County in the Eleventh and Twelfth legislatures from 1866 to 1871, chairing the Indian Affairs Committee.

What the plaque says

Schumacher Crossing on the Guadalupe River Christian Schumacher emigrated with his family from Germany to Texas in 1845, the year he was born. He came to Kerr County in 1880, later marrying Sarah Brazeal Sublett and moving to land along the Guadalupe River, near the site of an antebellum sawmill operation built by Gustav and Fredrich Tegener. In the 1920s, son John Randolph Schumacher built a series of dams across the river, providing security from raging floodwaters for a stream crossing and new road to hunt. Today, the dams remain and an improved highway bridge crosses the stream. Schumacher Crossing is still enjoyed for its scenery and access to the river. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 11 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Lost Maples State Natural Area — 23 mi
  A canyon of the upper Sabinal where a relict stand of bigtooth maples turns color each autumn, a sight that drew crowds up a gravel road long before there was a park.
• Treue der Union Monument — 25 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Frontier Times Museum — 28 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

More markers nearby

• Education in Hunt — 1.0 mi
• Hunt Japonica Cemetery — 1.6 mi
• Henderson Cemetery (Two miles north) — 4.1 mi
• Old Ingram — 4.7 mi