Comfort

Comfort, the second largest town in Kendall County, is located at the junction of State Highway 27, U.S. Highway 87, and Interstate Highway 10, sixteen miles northwest of Boerne on the county's western edge. The town was laid out near the site of an Indian village in 1854 by Ernst Hermann Altgelt, though its history goes back to a group of Germans from New Braunfels that settled in 1852 along the banks of the Cypress Creek above its confluence with the Guadalupe River. Freemasons, freethinkers, and political activists, middle-class German families, and liberals from Bettina and Sisterdale settled the area. Townsmen organized the community along cooperative lines and steadfastly opposed formal local government. Comfort opened a school shortly after its founding, but not until 1892 was a church built. The town was a center of Union sentiment during the Civil War and lost many young men at the battle of the Nueces in 1862. The Treue der Union monument on High Street across from the middle school campus honors these dead. From 1856 until Kendall County was organized in 1862, Comfort competed with Kerrville to become the county seat of Kerr County; Kerrville won.

Early agriculture and commerce in the area depended on sheep and goats, grains, lime burning (see LIMEKILNS), masonry, building rock, lumber, and shingles. In the 1940s and 1950s, when the Hill Country was an international wool and mohair center, Adolf Stieler of Comfort reigned as "Angora Goat King of the World." In the 1980s agribusiness continued to dominate the local economy, but hunting, fishing, sightseeing, and youth camps drew increasing numbers of tourists.