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History

 

New Braunfels is a city in Comal and Guadalupe counties in the U.S. state of Texas that is part of the San Antonio Metropolitan Area. Braunfels means "brown rock" in German; the city is named for Braunfels, in Germany. In the 2000 census the city's population was 36,494, which grew to 51,804 by the time of the 2007 census. It is the seat of Comal County.

 

NEW BRAUNFELS, TEXAS. New Braunfels, the county seat of Comal County, is at the confluence of the Guadalupe and Comal rivers and the intersection of Interstate Highway 35 and Farm Road 725, thirty miles northeast of San Antonio and forty-five miles southwest of Austin near the southeastern border of the county. It was founded on March 21, 1845, when, under the auspices of the Adelsverein, Nicolaus Zink led a German immigrant wagon train up the Guadalupe River to the ford of the San Antonio-Nacogdoches road. Within weeks Prince Solms had laid the cornerstone for a more permanent fort and headquarters for the immigrant association, the Sophienburg, made provision for supplying the burgeoning settlement through its first summer on the frontier, and handed leadership of the colony over to John O. Meusebach.

 

In 1952 New Braunfels had approximately 12,200 residents. To keep pace with this growth and attendant social changes, New Braunfels reorganized its city government twice in the twentieth century, replacing the original aldermanic form in 1920 with the mayor-commission system, and subsequently replacing that with a council-manager form. In 1947 the city incorporated eight suburbs within its limits.

 

In the twentieth century New Braunfels added tourism to its major industries. The replacement of water and steam with electrical power in the late 1800s made land along the Comal and Guadalupe rivers within the city limits available for public use. By 1936 the city had reserved much of this land for parks by purchasing Cypress Bend and Landa parks.  The opening of Natural Bridge Caverns and the Wurstfest, a German-heritage celebration, in the early 1960s also facilitated the growth of a tourist industry that by the mid-1980s supported some thirty hotels and motels, as well as resort condominiums, around the city and Canyon Lake.

 

Tourism combined with the continued vitality of the city's industrial sector to sustain a roughly 30 percent increase in the population of New Braunfels for several decades after World War II. The city's proximity to San Antonio was another factor in its growth; in 1973 Comal County became part of the San Antonio Metropolitan Statistical Area. In the mid-1980s New Braunfels had fourteen major industries, with textile and construction-materials producers predominant.

New Braunfels has a sizeable German Texan community. New Braunfels draws a fair amount of tourists from across the state, particularly because of the cold-spring rivers that run through the city. Many generations of families still return during the summer to tube down the Guadalupe River and Comal River. New Braunfels is the site of one of the most famous water parks in the United States, Schlitterbahn Water Park Resort. The Comal River is one of the shortest in the world just 3.2 miles (5.2 km) long, before emptying into the Guadalupe River.

 

Geography

 

New Braunfels is located at 29°42′6″N 98°7′25″W / 29.70167, -98.12361 (29.701724, -98.123559). This is 30 miles (48 km) northeast of San Antonio and 45 miles (72 km) southwest of Austin.  According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 29.4 square miles (76.1 km²), of which, 29.2 square miles (75.8 km²) of it is land and 0.2 square miles (0.4 km²) of it (0.51%) is water.

 

The city is situated along the Balcones Fault, where the Texas Hill Country meets rolling prairie land. Along the fault in the city, a string of artesian springs known as Comal Springs give rise to the Comal River, which is known as one of the shortest rivers in the world, as it winds three miles through the city before meeting the Guadalupe River.

Education

New Braunfels is served by the New Braunfels Independent School District and Comal Independent School District.

 

 

City and County Links

 

City of New Braunfels

Chamber of Commerce

Wurstfest