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http://www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd15.htm



It is about fifteen miles between the Cibolo and the Guadalupe, Smithwick was indeed keeping an "extremely moderate" pace. The remarkable thing is, he was still eighty miles from his destination at Coleman's Fort, the site of that structure being located on the east bank of the Colorado River in present-day east Austin.

A couple of miles north of the Cibolo at last you leave the four lanes and housing developements behind.

Here's the old road...



Brush, mesquite and cedar set in pretty quick around here without fires, so to get a prespective of the country more like it was back then you have to get up on high ground.

The hundred mile Austin/San Marcos/New Braunels/San Antonio Interstate 35 corridor still is one of the more rapidly growing areas in the US and open land is disappearing quick.
A broad valley runs north-south between New Braunfels and San Antone. The Old Nacodoches route runs up the western side, close to the Balcones Escarpment. Interstate 35 runs about a mile east, along the higher ground on the eastern side.

Here's a view from Interstate 35 south of New Braunfels looking east across Smithwick's route. Note that in his day there was scarcely a tree between San Antonio and Austin.



Somewhere along this route in July of 1840, perhaps 1,000 Comanches slipped down from the Hill Country to the west and launched their great raid on the Tejanos.

In more recent times, in 1983 Salem Bin Laden, eldest brother and reported head of the Bin Laden clan, died in this area when the ultralight he was flying hit power lines. Some accounts have suggested that had he still been alive, his younger brother Osama never would have been allowed to do the things he did.

Anyhoo... history passing away along the old route, who knows what stories that old store could tell...



...history preserved... St Joseph's Chapel, built in 1903 by local Catholic German farming families, restored just last year, tho the congregation is long gone...



..and history continuing... the Alamo Shuetzen Verein, one of four traditional German shooting clubs still extant in the Hill Country, the parent club having been founded just down the old road in New Braunfels in 1849. Check out the original rules Prior to 2002 shooting was done using only metallic sights with the exception of those over 70 years of age allowed to use a telescope.

http://home.roadrunner.com/~nbsv/index.html




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