New Braunfels Commerce Row: Hotels, Saloons & the Birth of Chili Powder

Two blocks of ordinary-looking downtown storefronts hide an outsized story: in the back café of a saloon here, a German immigrant cook mixed dried chilies and herbs into a spice blend he called 'tampico dust' — the seed of Gebhardt's Eagle Brand and the entire American chili-powder industry. This walk covers that saloon plus the hotels, bakery, and mercantile buildings around it, a compact stretch of 19th- and early-20th-century commercial architecture that's been doing business, in some cases, since one year after the town itself was founded.