The Rev. Gustav Gollbach, O.M.I.

The grotto behind the parish church reads less like a building than a hillside. It rises about 33 feet and spreads some 90, made of rock gathered near Roma, petrified wood from near Escobares and concrete posts etched to look like branches, with desert plants set into the walls. A seven-foot Madonna looks down on a kneeling figure of Bernadette Soubirous, the girl who reported the 1858 visions at Lourdes that this shrine recalls. Gollbach pastored the parish for thirteen years and built much of it himself.

What the plaque says

The Rev. Gustav Gollbach, O.M.I. (September 24, 1878-December 26, 1955) A native of Germany, Gustav Gollbach was ordained a priest in the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Order on April 21, 1906. He immigrated to Texas soon after his ordination, and served churches in Del Rio, Castroville, Mercedes, San Benito, and Ballinger before coming to Rio Grande City in 1924. Serving as pastor of Immaculate Conception Church until 1937, he built a replica of the Grotto Shrine at Lourdes, France, using petrified wood and native stone from the Roma area. Dedicated in 1928, it has become an important historic site in the Rio Grande Valley. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Roma Historic District — 12 mi
  A bluff-top Rio Grande steamboat port, now a National Historic Landmark District where Heinrich Portscheller's molded brick and walled stone compounds face Ciudad Miguel Alemán across the river.
• Falcon State Park — 24 mi
  A 576-acre state park at the foot of the Falcon International Reservoir, made by the dam Presidents Eisenhower and Ruiz Cortines dedicated in 1953, known for bass fishing, camping and brush-country birds.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 30 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.

More markers nearby

• Jose De Escandon — steps away
• Starr County — steps away
• Rio Grande City, C.S.A. — steps away
• Old Rancho Davis — steps away