Sattler

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Sattler, out in Comal County. Now settle in, because this little stretch of the Guadalupe River has worn a few different names, and every one of them tells you something. German immigrants were the first to colonize this area permanently, arriving along the Guadalupe in the 1850s.

A dispersed rural community, the kind that sprawls across creek bottoms and cedar breaks, spread out through those river bottoms. And for a while, folks couldn't quite agree on what to call the place. At different times it answered to Marienthal.

Then Walhalla. Then Mountain Valley. Three names, one community, and apparently a fair amount of stubbornness.

What finally settled the matter was something as practical as the mail. The post office first opened in 1856, out at the Wilhelm Sattler home. Then in 1880, when that post office moved to a more central location, the name Sattler came along with it, and it stuck.

Now, a post office is a fine anchor for a community, but the real beating heart of this one was the Weil-Nowotny-Guenther store. And don't let the name fool you into thinking it was just a place to pick up a sack of flour. That store sat at the center of a whole complex of buildings.

A post office. A dance hall. A cotton gin.

And, of all things, a bowling alley. Farm and ranch families from across the area gathered there, which makes a certain kind of sense. When you live spread out across rough country, you go where the lanes are.

Then came the 1960s, and with them the construction of Canyon Dam. That project hastened the dispersal of the German community that had put down roots there more than a century before. But Sattler's heritage, all those decades of German settlers, shifting names, and a store that somehow fit a bowling alley under the same roof as a cotton gin, that heritage remains significant in the history of Comal County.

Some places earn their name the hard way.

What the marker says

German immigrants were the first to colonize permanently this area along the Guadalupe River in the 1850s. The dispersed rural community was known at times as Marienthal, Walhalla and Mountain Valley, with the name Sattler assigned when the post office, first opened in 1856 at the Wilhelm Sattler home, was more centrally located in 1880. The Weil-Nowotny-Guenther store, with its complex of buildings-post office, dance hall, cotton gin and bowling alley-served as a gathering place for farm and ranch families who lived in the area. Construction of Canyon Dam in the 1960s hastened the dispersal of the German community, but the heritage of Sattler remains significant in the History of Comal County. (2002)