Zions Kirche

The congregation's burying ground came a dozen years after its organization. Joseph Hierholzer and Edward Pfeil each gave an acre, Rudolph Doerr was buried there in 1883, and the transaction was not made legal until a deed was filed on October 25, 1892. In the 1920s the Bracken church separated from the Zion cemetery, which stayed deeded to the church. In 1928 Adam and Katherine Wuest gave land for a Bracken church and a new community cemetery. Descendants formed a committee in the 1970s, headed by Henry Tolle, to look after the old ground on FM 1102 near Cibolo.

What the plaque says

Zions Kirche Organized 1871, with 52 German members, by the Rev. William Felsing, itinerant minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Building was erected 1872 of native limestone; enlarged 1893; had brick façade and bell tower added, 1913. Still in congregation are heirs of founders of this church. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natural Bridge Caverns — 6.1 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.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 10 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 13 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 — 19 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

• Schoenthal School — 2.5 mi
• Harrison and McCulloch Stage Stop — 3.8 mi
• Schertz — 4.3 mi
• Site of Geier and Schmid Farm — 4.5 mi