Mission Valley School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Way back in the mid-1840s, German settlers put down roots in a place they called Mission Valley, a name that reached back to an even earlier Spanish mission on that same land. Two layers of history before the story even gets started.

Now, these were practical people, hardworking people, and when it came to educating their children, they did what they had to do. They taught them at home. Kitchen tables, firelight, whatever it took.

But a community has a way of wanting something more permanent. Enter two brothers. Karl and Julius Brehmer looked at that situation, looked at each other, and donated the land for the first proper community school.

That was 1870. Trustees got to work and built a frame schoolhouse, and for a good stretch of years, that little frame building was the heart of learning in Mission Valley. Then 1884 came around, and the community decided it was time to think in stone.

On land acquired from Friedrich and Emilie Heidrich, they raised up a larger limestone school. Solid. Built to last.

And the old frame schoolhouse, well, it didn't go anywhere. It became a teacherage. The place where teachers lived.

Gave the old girl a second life. Decades rolled on. The world changed around Mission Valley, and in 1952, New Braunfels Independent School District annexed the community.

The school days wound down on that particular site. But here's the thing about a place with that much history in its walls. It doesn't just disappear.

That site, with the historic frame schoolhouse still standing, the limestone school still standing, stone cisterns and all the rest, it became a community center. The German settlers came in the mid-1840s. The Brehmer brothers gave the land in 1870.

The stone school went up in 1884. And that ground is still serving the people of Mission Valley today. Some places just refuse to be done.

What the marker says

German settlers established the Mission Valley community, named for an earlier Spanish mission, in the mid-1840s. Area families educated their children in their homes before brothers Karl and Julius Brehmer donated land for the first community school in 1870. Trustees built a frame schoolhouse, and in 1884 a larger limestone school was built on land acquired from Friedrich and Emilie Heidrich; the frame school then became a teacherage. New Braunfels Independent School District annexed Mission Valley in 1952. Since that time this site, which includes the historic frame and stone schoolhouses, stone cisterns and other features, has served as a community center. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2009