Spring Branch Post Office

The journal Elbel kept as postmaster, 1867 to 1872, matters most: it records who lived in the district, which papers they took and what a letter cost. Before him the office changed hands. Louis Willke opened it in 1858, Dr. Charles Porter followed in 1860, and his death in 1861 closed it. A Confederate post at the Comal Ranch served until 1865, and afterward residents read notices in the Neu Braunfelser Zeitung and fetched mail from New Braunfels. A Comal Ranch postmaster of 1862 subscribed to papers from New Orleans, New York and Mexico City.

What the plaque says

Spring Branch Post Office Gottlieb Elbel and Christiane Zeh immigrated to Texas from Germany in 1849. They married and settled this farm and were among the founders of Spring Branch Creek. Gottlieb built this two-room log cabin in 1852 where the family lived. The Spring Branch Post Office originally opened on Spring Branch Creek in 1858, closed during the Civil War, and reopened in this homestead cabin from 1867 to 1872 with Gottlieb Elbel as postmaster. He kept a postal journal that is an invaluable record of the postal correspondence and subscriptions of the area residents. This postal station between New Braunfels and Fredericksburg, with the mail delivered on horseback, was significant in the rural community's development. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 22 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 — 23 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.
• Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site — 26 mi
  A state park on the Pedernales opposite the LBJ Ranch, with a working Texas-German farm kept as it was around the First World War and the permit desk for the ranch tour.

More markers nearby

• Specht's Crossing — 1.3 mi
• Adam Becker Homestead — 1.5 mi
• Esser's Crossing at Wesson — 4.0 mi
• Fischer Homestead — 4.2 mi