St. Paul Church

The church grew with Cibolo itself. Jacob Schlather bought land here in 1867, and his son George built a store for the mostly German settlers around it, sold in 1882 to Charles Fromme, so that the place was known as Fromme's Store. The railroad station of 1877 was called Cibolo Valley, and a post office named Cibolo opened in 1883. By 1890 the community had a church, a cotton gin, a general store and 100 residents. O. Henry's story "The Smiling Valley of the Cibolo" was supposedly inspired by a visit, and Cibolo incorporated in 1968.

What the plaque says

St. Paul Church This congregation began about 1876 with German Lutheran worship services conducted by the Rev. T. Frehner and Oscar Samuel in private homes and a schoolhouse. A congregation, called St. Paulus Kirche, was formally organized and a church structure built on land donated by Mr. and Mrs. George Schlather in 1877. The congregation organized affiliate churches in the nearby communities of Marion in 1890 and Zuehl in 1900. A new church building was erected in 1905. Services were held exclusively in the German language until 1923. A third sanctuary was completed in 1959. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 11 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 — 12 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 — 14 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.
• The Alamo — 18 mi
  Mission San Antonio de Valero before it was a fort: a church its builders never finished, a thirteen-day siege in 1836, and the Army gable of 1850-52 that became its emblem.

More markers nearby

• Schertz — 2.7 mi
• Edens Cemetery — 4.5 mi
• Harrison and McCulloch Stage Stop — 5.0 mi
• Marion Public Schools — 5.2 mi