Once-thriving cotton community trumps with historical card

By MONETTE TAYLOR | South Central Texas Edition

The second mercantile store built by H.D. Gruene in 1907 lends evidence to the town's thriving commerce prior to the Great Depression and the invasion of boll weevils. The town of Gruene is on the nation's historical register. -Staff photo by Taylor

May 23, 2002 -- If you were enamored by the mythical town of Brigadoon, you will surely enjoy a visit to Gruene, which is tucked into a corner of New Braunfels.

The area was first settled by German farmers who arrived in Texas in the mid-1840s. As New Braunfels grew, the settlers moved out northward to a community originally called Goodwin.

It was here Ernst Gruene and his wife, Antoinette, brought their two sons and settled. His second son, Henry D. Gruene, became the founding father of the community soon to be renamed Gruene.

Originally, Gruene was a farming community, with cotton introduced to the area in 1852. By 1870, cotton was king and the number one cash crop.

Henry D. Gruene (H.D.) advertised for share croppers, and history shows that "within months, 20 to 30 families occupied Gruene's lands."

Gruene was not a man to ignore his friends and workers. He built a number of homes for his family and his farm foreman, along with a mercantile store in 1878. The store served as a main stage stop between San Antonio to Austin, and provided the community with supplies to help make their lives easier.

He constructed a cotton gin powered by a steam engine, with water from the Guadalupe River, and the gin processed the cotton raised in the area until it burned in 1922. The gin was replaced; the one powered by electricity. Part of the old boiler room remains at the Gristmill Restaurant on the banks of the Guadalupe.

Knowing that the people of the community needed a social outlet, Gruene also built a saloon and dance hall, Gruene Hall, which still operates today, and claims to be "the oldest dance hall in Texas" still being used. Today, the hall plays host to modern musicians, mostly with country and Americana music.

It is said that business was so good at the mercantile store, by 1907, Gruene built a second, new mercantile building that in a few years included a bank and post office for the community. Life, and commerce, were good.

Gruene died in 1920, and with him died much of the ambition for the little town; especially after the bad economic times brought on by the coming of the boll weevil in 1925 and the Great Depression in 1929.

For a community formed around the cotton industry, this meant disaster.

Although the Gruenes tried to keep the mercantile store open and extended credit to the area farmers, it was forced to close. Gruene was just another ghost town ... with a lot of memories.

In 1974-'75, much of the Gruene estate was purchased by a new financial group. This group, West-Leach and Associates realized they had something, and something big, with all of the history of the area, the historical structures, and the location by the Guadalupe River.

The group found new purchasers for the old buildings, and Gruene was on it's way to a historic recovery. The town of Gruene, in its entirety, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today, the area is thriving with bed and breakfast accommodations, restaurants, shops, and one of the No. 1 music venues in Texas.

On any given day, the streets are full of tourists who have tired of the fast pace of daily life, and just want to "step back in time," to an era when life was simpler and thoughts were mellow. They find that in Gruene, the once-thriving cotton community.