Bead-New Braunfels Multicolor Swirl Glass TB

This trackable has the modest goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers.  That is a rate of five drops per year for five years.  As of 18-Apr-20 it had survived for 4.9 years and had been moved by 8 cachers.

No permission is needed to leave the U.S.  While in the U.S., please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

Trackable photos are appreciated and will be re-posted here.

This is one of a series of large beads obtained from different places and converted into travel bugs.  They are named for Texas towns with interesting names or histories.

New Braunfels, the county seat of Comal County.  It was founded in March  1845, when Nicolaus Zink led a German immigrant wagontrain from the port of Indianola up the Guadalupe River.  They made camp at a site on Comal Creek and promptly organized to receive later arrivals.  Zink platted preliminary town and farm lots and supervised construction of a primitive stockade to protect them from allegedly cannibalistic Indians.  Within weeks they laid a cornerstone was laid for a more permanent fort and headquarters for the immigrant association, made provision for supplying the burgeoning settlement through its first summer on the frontier, and handed leadership of the colony over to John O. Meusebach.  By summer the settlers numbered between 300 and 400, and the community had been incorporated under the name of Prince Solms's estate on the Lahn River in western Germany, Braunfels.

Taking advantage of the reliable water power afforded by Comal Springs and the community's position on the road between Austin and San Antonio, the settlers wasted little time establishing businesses, millworks, and craft shops.  These soon made New Braunfels the commercial center of a growing agricultural area.  Many immigrants brought artisanal skills as well as business acumen to their new home.  Within a decade of its founding New Braunfels had emerged as a manufacturing center supplying wagons, farm implements, leather goods, furniture, and clothing for pioneers settling the hills of Central Texas.  The town also figured as an important market for the expanding agricultural frontier.  Its markets supplied places as far away as New Orleans, New York, and the Nassau province of Germany.  It is reported that in 1850 New Braunfels was the fourth largest town in Texas.

A gregarious lot, the Germans of New Braunfels also organized the Germania Singing Society, the Schuetzen Verein, a shooting club, and one of the early Turnvereins or athletic clubs.  All of these served to maintain the ethnic and cultural identity of the original settlers for later generations.  The Neu Braunfelser Zeitung, which issued its first edition in 1852, was published continuously in German until 1957.

My earliest experiences in the town was as a frequent traveler through the Texas Hill Country, in the 1960s.  There was a café there that served authentic German food, cooked and served by older ladies who spoke English with a heavy German accent.  They also sold wonderful smoked sausage from racks at the cash register.  Alas, that place exists no more.