Buescher

Buescher was on the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway from Alleyton to Smith Point, four miles north of Columbus in Colorado County. The area surrounding Buescher included lands originally granted to James Cummins and James Tumlinson, members of Stephen F. Austin's first colony. Beginning before the Civil War and continuing throughout the remainder of the 1800s, immigrants from Germany moved into the area, and many of the original large land grants were subdivided into smaller farms. During the 1880s a community grew around a store and saloon operated by Henry Buescher at a junction on the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio line. By 1899 the close-knit community had seven businesses, a popular dance hall, and the sobriquet Ax Handle Junction because of Mr. Buescher's propensity to keep the peace with an ax handle. Children in the area attended several successive schools, the last of which, Pin Oak School, was consolidated with the Columbus schools in 1924. When the railroad bridge over the Colorado River was destroyed by a flood and the line rerouted to the west, most of the Buescher businesses either moved or closed. Later, complete abandonment of the railroad line hastened the demise of the town. During the 1950s, cotton, from the beginning the area's staple crop, was also phased out, and most of the land reverted to pasture. By the 1980s the community was gone.