Slumber Falls Camp

The camp nearly ended in 2023, when its owner, the South Central Conference of the United Church of Christ, voted to sell the 20 acres on the Guadalupe. Former campers, camp parents and staff formed a nonprofit, Friends of Slumber Falls, to keep it running. A Canyon Lake couple bought the property and learned of the effort only afterward; Wilfred Bartoskewitz, a Seguin-area farmer and rancher, supplied the money to finish the purchase, and the contract passed to the Friends. A reunion on January 13, 2024 marked the rescue. The motto is "Camp for a week, friends for life."

What the plaque says

Slumber Falls Camp Located on the Guadalupe River Road four miles northwest of the city of New Braunfels, this area has been a popular swimming and picnicking site since the late 1800s. In the 1930s, Harry Landa sold 20 acres in the Veramendi survey to W.V. & Francis Schulz Lillie and it was developed into a tourist court. Mrs. Lillie and her brother, Herman Schrader, built 11 cabins one at a time as they could afford them. Advertised as "paradise of the hills," the camp was a popular tourist destination during a rapid increase in automobile tourism, particularly along River Road. The camp was a place to get away from the city and enjoy the beauty of a hill country river. Drought conditions closed the site as a tourist camp in 1957. As early as 1956, the Texas synod of the evangelical and reformed church (United Church of Christ) voted to seek a campsite for youth and adult activities. The wooded site with 11 cabins on limestone cliffs with majestic views overlooking the Guadalupe River was chosen. The property was purchased on December 31, 1957. Slumber Falls Camp, named for the peaceful and serene falls on the river, opened in the summer of 1958 with 385 campers and 100 staff. The camp facilities expanded and evolved into a beautiful naturally-landscaped camp with updated facilities while maintaining several of the original tourist court cabins for a 1930s camping experience. The camp continues the tradition of providing a memorable camping and learning experience for youth and adults where they can slumber with the sound of waterfalls. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gruene Historic District — 2.6 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.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 4.0 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 — 13 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 — 16 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 Cotton Gin — 2.5 mi
• Original Gruene Mercantile — 2.6 mi
• Gruene — 2.6 mi
• Site of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Mission - Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission — 2.8 mi