"Gruene (pronounced “green”)
is a town in Comal County,
Texas. Once a significant cotton-producing community
along the Guadalupe
River, the economy is now supported primarily by tourism. Gruene lies
entirely within the city limits of New Braunfels.
Much of Gruene was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April
21, 1975. Gruene's history begins
in 1872 when first generation German American farmer Heinrich (Henry) D. Gruene
purchased 6,000 acres of farmland three miles north of New Braunfels along
the Guadalupe
River. He built his house and planted his surrounding land with cotton. In 1878, Gruene
opened a mercantile store to serve the several dozen or so families sharecropping on his land.
The town benefitted by its location along the stagecoach route between Austin and San Antonio, the store
thrived for many years and stimulated local commercial growth. Gruene Hall opened in
1878, and the Thorn Hill School and three large cotton gins soon followed. By
the time the International-Great
Northern Railroad was built across Comal County in the 1880s the
small community was bustling with commercial and farming activity. By 1900,
Gruene was a prominent banking, ginning, and shipping center for area cotton
farming. Though it never had a post office of its own, the community did
possess two freight rail stations by the 1910s. Gruene was decimated, however,
by the boll weevil
blight of the 1920s, and further doomed by the effects of the Great Depression. By 1930
the population had fallen to 75, and post World War II highway
construction bypassed the town. By 1950 Gruene was essentially abandoned and
had become a ghost town. As a result of the restoration of area structures,
such as the Gruene Hall and old mercantile store, Gruene began a re-birth of
sorts in the early 1970s. Redevelopment and restoration of the area continued
throughout the 1970s and 1980s and today, and though no longer an autonomous
community (it was annexed by New Braunfels in 1979), Gruene maintains a
thriving tourist business. Many original structures from the town's heyday
still exist, including the Gruene Family Home, a Victorian-style
edifice built in 1872 which is listed on the National
Register of Historic Places and today operates as the Gruene Mansion
Inn. A historic water tower rises above Gruene Hall, and other buildings at the
heart of the district have been renovated into shops and restaurants."
~above taken from www.wikipedia.com~
