Zedler's Mills

Fritz Zedler was born in Friedberg, Prussia, in 1840 and came to Texas with his family in 1852, landing at Indianola and settling at Yorktown. At eighteen he was carrying mail between Indianola and Gonzales; later he drove cattle to New Orleans and ran freight from Indianola to San Antonio. He married Louise Fechner in 1862, and they raised eleven children, spending a year or two in Mexico. Before Luling he built a mill complex at Sandies in Gonzales County. He retired in 1902, died in 1932, and his 1900 house was restored in 1972.

What the plaque says

Zedler's Mills John and James Merriwether and Leonidas Hardeman in 1874 built gristmill and sawmill at this site, with stone dam across the San Marcos. Bob Innes, John Orchard, J. K. Walker, and Fritz Zedler, as Luling Water Power Co., bought mills (1884), adding cotton gin. A milling veteran, Zedler in 1888 bought all stock and made eldest son partner. The gin, soon burned, was rebuilt. Units were added. Sons Herman and Charles joined firm. In 1890 and later, the Zedlers furnished water to city; 1894 and later, city power. In time various mill units closed; operations ceased about 1960. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 15 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 23 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 28 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.

More markers nearby

• Episcopal Church of the Annunciation — 0.8 mi
• City of Luling — 1.0 mi
• Edgar B. Davis, Oil Pioneer-Philanthropist — 1.1 mi
• Rosenwald School — 1.4 mi