Bowser Community

Duane's take

The way the official marker tells it, here's the story of Bowser Community, out in San Saba County. Around 1858, the Abel Bowser family settled in at a large bend in the Colorado River, about three miles north of where you're standing right now. And when a family puts down roots in a place like that, a place tends to grow up around them.

A village came together. A school followed. A cemetery, too.

People called it Bowser Bend, and that name stuck right on through the late 1880s, by which time the community had added a cotton gin and a store. Now, a big bend in a river is a beautiful thing to look at. Living right next to one, though, that's a different proposition.

The Colorado had a habit of flooding, and eventually the community had to reckon with that. In 1890, a man named Paul Varga donated land right here at this site for a chapel and a cemetery. The community was movin' to higher ground.

Then, in the early 1900s, J. T. Martin sold town lots and deeded land for a school one-half mile east.

Bowser wasn't just bending, it was relocating altogether. But here's the thing about a town that moves. It has to take everything with it, or it starts to lose pieces of itself.

The post office closed. The gin closed. The school closed.

One by one, through the 1940s, those closures did what river floods never quite managed to finish. Bowser declined. The Abel Bowser family settled a bend in a river, and a whole community grew up, moved, and faded, all within a few generations.

The marker's still here, which is more than you can say for the post office.

What the marker says

About 1858 the Abel Bowser family settled at a large bend in the Colorado River about 3 miles north of this site. The developing village, school and cemetery became known as Bowser Bend and by the late 1880s included a cotton gin and store. Due to river floods, Paul Varga donated land at this site for a chapel and cemetery in 1890. In the early 1900s J. T. Martin sold town lots and deeded land for a school one-half mile east. The town of Bowser relocated, but the closure of the post office, gin and school caused it to decline in the 1940s. (1990)