Comal Industry: Springs, Bridges, Wire & Rail

New Braunfels didn't just get lucky with a river spring — it methodically built an industrial economy on top of it. Joseph Landa's 1859 purchase of the Comal Springs kicked off nearly a century of engineering: gristmills and a woolen mill running on spring-fed water power, a patented wire-fence design tested at a local sawmill, a wrought-iron bridge hauling El Camino Real traffic over the Guadalupe, and — after decades of petitioning — a rail line that finally connected the town to the wider Texas economy in 1880. This driving loop covers all of it, ending at a rural schoolhouse the town later turned into its own preservation project.