Startzville Community

Startzville grew from a crossroads store into one of the largest communities around Canyon Lake. Its population was estimated at thirty for decades, from the 1960s through 2000, even as land near the new lake was laid out in residential subdivisions and businesses opened to serve the region. New subdivisions then brought rapid growth: by 2009 about 5,000 people lived in the area, and by 2016 some 7,000. Startzville Elementary School opened in 2008, and the unincorporated community is now counted within the Canyon Lake census-designated place.

What the plaque says

Startzville Community The area of Startzville was established at the intersection of Cranes Mill Road and Sattler Road. In 1940 Bruno and Viola Elbel built a cedar yard and store. Curt and Alice Schlameus Startz leased the building in 1944, operated the store and eventually bought the property in 1946. Curt Startz was the grandson of Heinrich and Louise Artzt Startz that settled in the area in the 1850s. The name Startzville was first used in 1950 by artist Dr. E. J. Duffin who completed a painting of the store front. Selling ice was a significant business before, during and after the building of Canyon Dam and Lake. In 1963, James and Lorine Pantermuehl Startz added a café that is still in operation today. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natural Bridge Caverns — 11 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 — 12 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 — 13 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.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 21 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

• German Pioneers in Texas — 4.7 mi
• Sattler — 5.9 mi
• Esser's Crossing at Wesson — 6.5 mi
• Agricultural Society of Fischer — 9.5 mi