Cat Spring: A German Settlement in the Texas Hills

Long before the great German migrations to the Texas Hill Country, a handful of families settled a spring-fed rise in the rolling country of Austin County and named it Cat Spring — for the wildcats said to prowl the water. This was one of the earliest German settlements in Texas, planted in the 1830s by immigrants who came seeking farmland and freedom, and it has never stopped being a living, working community of farms, churches, and cemeteries. This quiet driving tour traces the German heart of Cat Spring: the town marker that tells the founding story, the agricultural society hall where farmers have gathered for well over a century, and the pioneer cemeteries and country churches where the settling families still lie among their descendants. It is a tour of the countryside as much as of history — take the farm roads slowly, and imagine the ox-drawn wagons of the first German colonists breaking this ground.