The Wagon Road between Comfort and Sisterdale

Railroad diagrams between 1870 and 1910 indicate that a wagon road existed between Comfort and Sisterdale, which roughly paralleled the course of the Guadalupe River, but one or two miles north of the river. Hermann Seele chronicled two trips along this wagon road between Sisterdale and Comfort in the late 1850’s and early 1860’s.

Railroad diagrams between 1870 and 1910 indicate that a wagon road existed between Comfort and Sisterdale, and this road almost certainly utilized a previous Indian Trail. From these diagrams it appears that the first few miles of that road, proceeding eastward from Comfort, until it intersected the Pinta Trail on the eastern edge of Block Creek near the current intersection of FM 473 and the Waring-Welfare Road. At that point the wagon road continued eastward, roughly paralleling the course of the Guadalupe River, but one or two miles north of the river. At a point about three miles east of Block Creek, the Pinta Trail (Old San Antonio Road) continued to the south and crossed the Guadalupe River at Waring. Then it proceeded, along the present course of the Waring-Welfare Road to Welfare and then on to Boerne and San Antonio.

The present FM 473 between Comfort and Sisterdale would closely approximate the route of the wagon road between Comfort and Sisterdale. The railroad diagrams indicate that the road going eastward toward Sisterdale deviated sharply to the north at two points and then quickly returned its easterly route. It is thought that these deviations were at the first and second Coffee Hollows, which would have been difficult to cross with wagons pulled by teams of oxen.

Hermann Seele chronicled two trips along this wagon road between Sisterdale and Comfort in the late 1850’s and early 1860’s, and his accounts are contained in “The Cypress.”

Compiled from various sources by

Joe Cooper

Kendall County, Texas

August 23, 2009

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REFERENCES

· The San Antonio, Fredericksburg & Northern Railway Company 1913 – 1917 in A History of the Texas Shortline Railroads, May, June, July 1996, Volume 1, Number 1, Page 17.

· Hermann Seele, Edward C. Breitenkamp, Tr., The Cypress and Other Writings of a German Pioneer in Texas, (Austin, London: German-Texan Heritage Society, 1979), 157-158.