Comfort, Texas

Comfort is an unincorporated community in western Kendall County, about sixteen miles northwest of Boerne, where State Highway 27, U.S. Highway 87, and Interstate 10 come together. Roughly 2,200 people live there. It has no mayor, no city council, and no municipal government of any kind — a condition the community has chosen, repeatedly, since its founding.

The Freethinkers

In 1852, German families from New Braunfels settled along Cypress Creek above its confluence with the Guadalupe. Two years later Ernst Hermann Altgelt laid out the townsite. The settlers belonged to a wider migration of educated, middle-class Germans who had left Europe after the failed revolutions of 1848 — Freemasons, freethinkers, political liberals, many arriving by way of the earlier settlements at Bettina and Sisterdale.

They organized along cooperative lines and opposed formal local government. A school opened soon after the founding. No church was built until 1892, and the town kept a tradition of secular funerals well into the twentieth century.

From 1856 until Kendall County was organized in 1862, Comfort competed with Kerrville to become the seat of Kerr County. Kerrville won. The early economy ran on sheep, goats, grain, lime burning, masonry, building rock, lumber, and shingles. By the middle of the twentieth century the Hill Country had become an international wool and mohair center, and Adolf Stieler of Comfort was known as the Angora Goat King of the World.

The Historic District

Much of the original townsite is listed on the National Register of Historic Places — more than one hundred buildings raised between the 1860s and the 1920s, in half-timber, Victorian commercial, and limestone construction. The district was never demolished and never modernized away, which is the whole reason people come.

The August Faltin Building, at Main and 7th, is the one people photograph. The San Antonio architect Alfred Giles designed it for Friedrich August Faltin, a Prussian-born merchant who had come to Comfort in 1856; it was completed in 1879, and Giles added to it in 1907. Architectural historians consider it among his finest work in the town, and he designed several buildings here. It is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Treue der Union

On August 10, 1862, a group of German Texans from the Hill Country — men who had refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy — were attacked near the Nueces River as they tried to reach Mexico. Some were killed in the fighting. Some were executed after they had been captured.

On August 20, 1865, roughly three hundred people gathered in Comfort for a funeral for the recovered remains. The monument — Treue der Union, Loyalty to the Union — was dedicated on August 10, 1866. It is a limestone obelisk on High Street, inscribed with the names of the dead.

It is the oldest Civil War memorial in Texas, one of very few Union monuments anywhere in the former Confederacy, and one of a small number of sites in the United States permitted to fly the flag at half-staff in perpetuity.

Cypress Creek and the Guadalupe

Comfort sits where Cypress Creek meets the Guadalupe River. The creek runs through the middle of town; the river passes along its southern edge. Both are spring-fed Hill Country streams, and both rise fast.

This is Flash Flood Alley. The Guadalupe rises on rain that fell twenty miles upstream, under a clear sky overhead. Low-water crossings go under first, and they are not a shortcut. The gauge for this stretch is USGS 08167000, Guadalupe River at Comfort — read it before you plan anything near the water, and know your high ground before you sleep near it. Nobody can promise a river is safe.

Food and Drink

High Street carries most of it. High's Cafe & Store does locally sourced meals alongside a retail shop; Comfort Pizza turns out mesquite wood-fired sourdough; Both Hands Burgers works in wagyu. On TX-27, Cypress Creek Inn has been serving home cooking since 1952 and bills itself as the longest-running restaurant in town.

For wine, Bending Branch Winery pours Texas wines and bourbon; Singing Water Vineyards runs live music on weekends; Newsom Vineyards keeps a tasting room downtown. Hill Country Cider House takes reservations only. For coffee and pastry, Spotted Deer and Comfort Coffee Co. inside the 8th Street Market.

Antiques and Shops

Comfort is an antiquing town. The 8th Street Market spreads a multi-dealer community across two-plus acres of architectural salvage, vintage, and antiques. Comfort Antique Mall runs eight thousand square feet and better than thirty vendors. The Farmhouse stages its pieces in vignettes. Along High Street, Freethinkers General Store, 723 High, and Fiddlin' Frogs handle clothing, gifts, and home goods, and MixHaus Gallery shows mixed-media work.

Events

Christmas in Comfort falls on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and is the town's largest day of the year — more than a hundred vendors, two music stages, a lighted night parade, tree lighting, fireworks. The Comfort Art Festival brings some forty Hill Country artists into the shops of the historic district each September. The Vintage Flea takes over the 8th Street Market grounds in late September. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre Rally, a motorcycle rally, runs in February. The Comfort Heritage Foundation hosts a self-paced walking tour of the historic buildings each spring. A memorial ceremony is held at the Treue der Union monument every August 10.

Practical Information

Getting there: I-10 Exit 524. Sixteen miles northwest of Boerne, about twenty minutes; roughly forty-eight miles from San Antonio.

Pace: Comfort is a walking town Wednesday through Sunday and a quiet one on Monday and Tuesday, when many shops are closed. Plan around that before you drive out.

Seasons: Spring for wildflowers and comfortable temperatures. Fall for antiquing and the run-up to the holidays. Summer is hot, and most of the day moves indoors or out to the wineries.

Nearest pharmacy: Boerne, sixteen miles southeast, or Kerrville, twenty-two miles northwest. There is none in Comfort.

Why It Matters

Comfort is the western anchor of Kendall County — the counterweight to Boerne on the eastern end. Where Boerne grew into a small city with a government and highway frontage, Comfort stayed unincorporated and left its historic district alone. It draws antique dealers, architecture people, and wine-trail travelers who would rather visit a town that has not been rebuilt to accommodate them. Its role is specific: it is where the nineteenth-century Hill Country streetscape still stands, and where the German freethinker heritage is most plainly visible.