On Our Way To Fredericksburg, TX 5/3/2010

We were off this morning early for our 90 mile drive to Fredericksburg, TX which is above San Antonio and is an old German settled city.

Fredericksburg (German: Friedrichsburg) was founded in 1846 by Baron Otfried Hans von Meusebach, new Commissioner General of the "Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas", also known as the "Noblemen's Society" (in German: Mainzer Adelsverein), and named in honor of Prince Frederick of Prussia, nephew of Prussia's King Frederick William III, and highest ranking member of the Mainzer Adelsverein. Old-time German residents often referred to Fredericksburg as Fritztown, a nickname that is still used in some businesses.
Baron von Meusebach renounced his noble title and became known in Texas as John O. Meusebach. Settled largely by liberal, educated Germans fleeing the failed Revolution of 1848, Gillespie County voted against secession prior to the American Civil War. Fredericksburg is also the home of the architect, Chester Nagel.
The town is also notable as the home of Texas German, a German dialect spoken by the first generations of settlers who initially refused to learn English. The German settlers of Fredericksburg acted independently of the region.
Meusebach's group brokered the 1847 Meusebach–Comanche Treaty that has been honored for over a century and a half, making it one of the very few treaties with Native American tribes that was never broken.
Fredericksburg was an important part of the Pro-Union Texas resistance during the Civil War, facing ostracization from their neighbors who remained loyal to Texas. Its concentration of German-American settlers means that it shares many cultural characteristics with New Braunfels, another German Texan town.
Fredericksburg was the birthplace of Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Forces in World War II. The hotel owned by Nimitz's grandfather has been converted into a museum, named the National Museum of the Pacific War honoring the men and women who served with Nimitz in the war. After the war, the Japanese government gave a Zen garden to the museum as a tribute to the Nimitz family.
The nearby much larger George Bush Gallery, which opened in 1999, is home to an I.J.N. Ko-hyoteki class midget submarine and an American B-25. The land for the Bush Gallery was bought from H-E-B Grocery. Money for the gallery was privately raised in the 1990s through the efforts of finance chairman Lee Bass and a board that included baseball star Nolan Ryan and Ernest Angelo, a former mayor of Midland. Admission tickets cover both museums.
The city has become a weekend destination for people in Central Texas, specifically those from Austin and San Antonio, who come for the bed and breakfasts, abundant hunting, fishing, antique stores, museums, the German influence in the form of bakeries, restaurants, stores, and peaches. Fredericksburg and the surrounding area are home to over 300 bed and breakfast accommodations. The nearby Wildseed Farms is also a popular destination for gardening enthusiasts. The Main Street located in the Historic District is the prime shopping district which attracts many out of town visitors.
Fredericksburg has a large open air Pioneer Museum [17] which underwent renovation in 2008. There is also the smaller Vereins-Kirche Museum, which accents German culture and local history, including Fredericksburg businesses as gasoline stations and Radio KNAF. "Vereins-Kirche" in German means "Society Church". This was hence the first public building constructed in 1847 by the original Fredericksburg settlers. The building models a style known as "Carolingian octagon," similar to the cathedral of Charlemagne at Aachen, Germany. Originally all denominations met at Vereins-Kirche". The bell at Vereins-Kirche came from Brenham, Germany.
A big tourist draw that combines history and German tradition has been Fredericksburg's annual Easter Fires pageant traditionally held the Saturday before Easter. It commemorates the signing of the 1847 Meusebach–Comanche Treaty when legend has it that Comanches celebrated the signing of the treaty by lighting huge fires on the hills. Settler mothers calmed their children by relating the traditional German story of Easter fires, and telling children the bunnies were boiling water to make eggs for Easter morning. The pageant was suspended in recent years due to logistics, but a group of citizens is trying to revive it.
Just east of Fredericksburg is the restored U.S. Army post, Fort Martin Scott, occupied from 1848-1853 to subdue the Indians.
Fredericksburg is also home to a unique form of residential architecture called "Sunday Houses, which were built by the early German settlers as weekend homes. Because a large majority of the county population lived in outlying areas, the settlers would use these homes while in town for the weekend; often to patronize local merchants and attend church services. The form of these houses often consisted of several rooms downstairs, with an upstairs sleeping loft that was accessed by an outside staircase.
Fredericksburg is home to an award-winning brewpub and is also located near the center of the wine industry in central Texas. The designated American Viticultural Areas of Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country AVA and the much larger Texas Hill Country AVA both include Fredericksburg inside their boundaries. Fredericksburg is a common starting point or destination for tourists visiting wineries in the Texas Hill Country.


We are staying at Hill Country RV Park just outside of Fredericksburg. We got there about 11:30 and got all set up and had lunch. After lunch I went out and wiped down the coach and took the bugs and marks off it. Then we loaded a few caches in the GPS and we were off. Our first cache was next door to the campgrounds at the local police department. Our next 2 caches were at Fort Martin Scott just down the road from Hill Country.

Fort Martin Scott is a restored United States Army outpost near Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country, United States, that was active from 1848 until 1853. It was part of a line of frontier forts established to protect settlers within Texas.
The fort was originally established as Camp Houston on December 5, 1848, and quartered Companies D and H, First United States Infantry. It was located two miles southeast of Fredericksburg on Baron's Creek and eventually consisted of a complex of twenty-one buildings. The soldiers patrolled the Fredericksburg-San Antonio road and surrounding area. One mission of the outpost was to protect settlers from Indian attack. However, the German immigrants that settled the area had already established a treaty with the local Comanche in 1847, and the two sides lived fairly peacefully together. In 1850, Indian agent John Rollins, with escort from Captain Hamilton W. Merrill and the Second Dragoons from Fort Martin Scott, negotiated the Fort Martin Scott Treaty with the Indians, which prevented open hostilities.
The Eighth Military Department renamed the camp in December 1849 for Major Martin Scott, who was killed at the Battle of Molino del Rey in the Mexican War in 1847. The forces stationed at the fort began alternating between a company of infantry and one of dragoons. As the settlers pushed farther west, Fort Martin Scott lost its strategic significance. In 1853, Army inspectors recommended that the fort be closed. The Eighth Military Department ordered that Fort Martin Scott close in December 1853.
The site was occupied intermittently by the Texas Rangers and then the Confederate States Army. In September 1866, General Philip H. Sheridan ordered elements of the Fourth United States Cavalry to Fort Martin Scott to secure the frontier once again from possible Indian attacks. By the end of 1866, the fort was permanently abandoned by military units. Many of the Martin Scott commanders fought in the American Civil War, including William R. Montgomery, William Steele, Edward D. Blake, James Longstreet, and Theodore Fink.
In the early 1880s, the fort was the location of the Gillespie County Fair. Owned from 1870-1959 by members of the Braeutigam family, Martin Scott was sold to the City of Fredericksburg in 1959. In 1986, the Fredericksburg Heritage Federation began extensive work of reconstructing the site as a tourist attraction.
Among highlights of the fort are the post commander’s quarters (formerly Braeutigam Garden), six buildings of officers’ housing, sutler’s store and warehouse, laundry, bakehouse with oven, military hospital, three sets of enlisted men’s barracks, quartermaster’s warehouse, a stable with barn, and a blacksmith shop. The guardhouse, made of cut limestone, is the only surviving building from the original fort, having been restored to its original design in the early 1990s. It was the Braeutigam’s homestead.
We took a self guided walking tour through the grounds looking at the historical markers and buildings. We found our 2 caches one of which was a puzzle cache which was fun to do. You had to go to the coords and on a telephone pole was a small piece of PVC pipe you had to look through to give you the final cache location, which was an old oak tree with huge branches and roots.

We did one more cache at the Das Peach House Shop where they sold wine and other assorted foods and things. Thgen we took a drive down the main street of the town and looked at all the old shops and stores. We stopped at the Pie House and got a couple of pieces of pie for later ($4.95 a piece or $25.00 for a whole pie......PRICEY). Then we stopped at another German bakery and got a couple of buns for breakfast and a cupcake. Then it was back to the RV for the afternoon and evening. Well until tomorrow we will see you then and we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick