River Haus

The town is barely older than the house. Henri Castro crossed the Medina River with his colonists on September 3, 1844, and named the place Castroville nine days later. Jean Ulrich Zuercher was among them — he came with his wife Dorothe, and the family was granted a town lot and forty acres, which is what Castro promised every colonist who made the crossing.

What he built was small. One room on each side of a shared chimney, and not much else. That front room with the fireplace is the original house, and everything around it came later — a house that grew for a hundred and eighty years the way houses do when a family stays. Board-and-batten walls in a town that made its name in limestone. Wide plank floors, open beams with the roof decking showing above, and two doors onto the front porch from the days before hallways.

Two bedrooms, sleeps four. A queen downstairs, and up under the eaves a single and a double where the walls come down to meet the floor — a good room for kids, and a low one for anyone tall. Two full baths, both down: one with a claw-foot tub, and a shower off the primary bedroom. Full kitchen with a dishwasher, a dining table for four, washer and dryer, satellite and a big screen. A covered back porch with seating, and a gas grill.

Then there is the river. The Medina runs at the back of the property — the same water Castro's colonists crossed to get here, and the reason they stopped where they did. There is a dock, kayaks to use, a lookout deck above the bank, and fishing when you want it. String lights come on after dark and the whole stretch turns into the best room in the house.

The stairs down to the water are worth a look on the way. Every brick in them is stamped D'HANIS — from the brickworks in Castro's fourth colony, twenty-five miles west, which sent brick out by rail for decades. Two of the man's four towns, in one staircase.

Castroville itself is a walk away. The Landmark Inn, St. Louis Church, the old Medina County courthouse, and ninety-six surveyed buildings in a National Register historic district that has looked more or less like this since the 1870s. Twenty-five miles west of San Antonio and a hundred and eighty years from anywhere.