The history under the places people drive past. Each one starts on a backroad, with something that didn’t make sense, and ends with what we found out. Sources and photo credits are on every story.
MedinaMedina doesn’t announce itself
Highway 16 under the trees, a slice of apple pie, and the wall of names at the veterans memorial.
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Camp VerdeRead the other side
The monument ends mid-sentence. Walk around the back and you find 80 captured camels and a ventriloquist.
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FredericksburgA burger, a ghost town and three million bats
Bankersmith, a German farmstead and the bats of Old Tunnel, all left behind by a railroad that lasted 29 years.
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FredericksburgRead it in the walls
An 1847 cabin with a fireplace, an 1865 barn with gun slots, and what happened to one family in between.
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BanderaThe first Cowboy Mardi Gras
Three entries, a ten-dollar permit, and a Cajun couple who modeled it on the country Mardi Gras, not New Orleans.
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Boerne and Pipe CreekBehind the gate
3,852 acres of Hill Country that were never ranched, and the couple who gave it all away.
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SisterdaleThe marker in the weeds
A German baron, a lending library and a water cure in an 1850s farm valley, and the marker you can drive past at fifty-five.
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The whole Hill CountryIt starts with water
Why the official maps disagree, and what the rivers, rock and soil say about where the Hill Country really begins.
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