Spring Branch

The site of Spring Branch, twenty-one miles northwest of New Braunfels in the hills of western Comal County, was settled by the D. Knibbe family in 1852 and named for a spring that flows into the Guadalupe River. The post office opened in the Knibbe store in 1858. Before the Civil War the post office was in the home of Peter Horne. G. Elbel, the first postmaster after the war, recorded in his files that United States mail service was reestablished between New Braunfels and Fredericksburg via Spring Branch on August 27, 1867. The post office continued in 1986 to serve the community, though the Spring Branch school had been consolidated with the Sherwood system. The population of Spring Branch was estimated at twenty-five for most of the twentieth century. After the completion of Canyon Dam and the filling of nearby Canyon Lake in the mid-1960s, estimates of the population grew to 200 in 1990.