By Myra Lee Goff

What is under about 100 feet of water in Canyon Lake? Or better still, what would still be there if the lake had not been constructed?

I started looking and found out: ranch land, farm land, trees, cemeteries, Guadalupe River and the site of two very small communities, Hancock and Cranes Mill.

Plans for the improvement of the Guadalupe River Water Shed by building a dam go as far back as 1929. A survey was made in 1935 and was authorized 10 years later. Four sites were considered, with the one chosen 21 miles from New Braunfels. Construction began in 1960, and by 1964 when the gates were finally closed, the lake began to fill.

With a shoreline of 80 miles, reservoir storage was estimated at 740,900 acre feet. Total cost of the project was around $20.2 million, with about $3 million more than projected due to road work and north and south access roads (source: Alton Rahe’s “History of Sattler and Mountain Valley School”).

Some 500,000 cubic yards of material were hauled to the dam site out of a rock quarry owned by Roland and Gladys Erben. In a Reflections tape made for the Sophienburg, they said holes were drilled with air hammers. The holes were filled with ammonium nitrate and set off with a dynamite charge, causing 5,000 pounds of rock blasting each time.

Now under water, the small settlement of Hancock would be there. It was named after the land’s original owner, John Hancock, who in 1851 was granted the land on the north bank of the Guadalupe River.

Eventually, Frank Guenther acquired the land and established a store and opened a Post Office in 1916. This Post Office was closed in 1934 and, according to Oscar Haas, the population of Hancock in 1940 was 10.

Frank Guenther was one of the children of Christian Guenther, one of the orphans raised by the Ervendbergs at the Weisenhaus (orphanage). Christian Guenther came from Germany with his parents and his three siblings in 1845. His mother and two siblings died aboard ship and his father died in Texas in 1847, leaving 8-year-old Christian as an orphan. As an adult, Christian settled in Sattler, raised a family of six children, one of which was Frank Guenther (source: Brenda Anderson Lindeman’s “Spring Branch”).

The other community under Canyon Lake would be Cranes Mill. James Crain established a cypress shingle mill in the 1850s along the Guadalupe. Notice the spelling which changed from “Crain” to “Crane” after the Civil War.

My neighbor Olive Marcelle Hofheinz, is the g-granddaughter of a very well-known man in the Cranes Mill area, the Rev. August Engel. Engel arrived in Texas in 1846 and came to New Braunfels where he married his wife and then moved to the area known as Luckenbach.

They began that General Merchandising Store that we know. It was his home and they named Luckenbach after their son-in-law.

The Engels moved to Cranes Mill in 1870, there opening a store and establishing a Post Office he ran for 31 years. But Engel had another calling: He was a circuit-riding preacher in the river valley, Rebecca Creek, Cranes Mill, Twin Sisters and sometimes in New Braunfels. His wife was a midwife. The two of them performed many services for all the people in the area.

In 1890 August Engel’s son, August W. Engel, took over the store and the Post Office and remained there until 1935. Marcelle Hofheinz remembers Cranes Mill Post Office.

The Post Office was in the center of the store and it was enclosed in fine mesh wire, protecting cornmeal and flour from mice.

When Canyon Dam was being constructed over a six-year period, my husband Glyn drove our family of three children to the North Park overlook and took slides at least three times a month. After that, we would go to the Roland Erben ranch to look for rocks. Rock hunting became a lifelong hobby for all of us.

As for Glyn’s slides, you can view them detailing the construction of Canyon Dam by visiting http://www.co.comal.tx. us/CCHC.htm.

What's under Canyon Lake? The remains of the Hancock store disappeared below the waters of Canyon Lake.

By Myra Lee Adams Goff

When I was in the ninth grade, I had a group of friends who were Mariner Girl Scouts. New Braunfels rivers were the perfect spot for this scouting program.

We had a friend who lived on the Guadalupe River and had a rowboat. We would take turns rowing the boat. Our rowing skills were improved when we realized that there were snakes hanging from the trees on the opposite bank. You can row fast if you are underneath these branches.

Invariably, our male friends who were Sea Scout Boy Scouts would show up, jump in the river, swim to the boat and turn it over, dumping us into the Guadalupe. This activity was repeated over and over. Once, floating in tubes, we were chased by an alligator gar. We were told that they were harmless, but we remembered stories of the olden days when there were real alligators in the rivers, particularly the Comal River.

Nearby was the spot where the Comal merges with the Guadalupe and continues on its journey to the Gulf of Mexico. We were well acquainted with the confluence of the two rivers. Before Canyon Dam was built, the Guadalupe was milky green and almost warm; the Comal was crystal clear and cold. You could definitely tell when you left the Guadalupe and entered the Comal.

Those memories came back when I started doing research on the ferry boat that once transported emigrants across the river at this very spot.

The first settlers in 1845 did not have a ferry when they crossed the Guadalupe at Nacogdoches Road, but soon the first ferry appeared. The German Emigration Co. granted three acres to Adolf von Wedemeyer to build and operate a ferry near the junction of the Guadalupe and Comal.

In 1847, this land and business was sold to Justus Kellner, who died soon thereafter. His widow married Carl Bardenwerper, and they took over the ferry until 1866, when they sold the property to Florenz Kreuz.

Dr. Ferdinand Roemer describes arriving at the site of the ferry in 1846 in the evening. A horn hanging from a tree signaled the ferry operator on the other side of the river to come pick him up. After waiting for quite a long time, someone finally called that the river was too flooded to cross and to wait until the next morning. Roemer camped outside in a rainy norther, and the next morning two young men arrived and guided the ferry across.

The junction of the two rivers has other interesting history.

In the 1700s, the Spaniards who owned Texas made treks through what was to become the state of Texas, using the El Camino Real trail. Martin de Alarcon, governor of the province of Texas in 1718, crossed the Rio Grande and headed towards what would become San Antonio. There he established the Villa de Bexar (SA) and founded the Mission San Antonio de Valero (Alamo).

The diary of Martin de Alarcon was translated by Dr. Fritz Leo Hoffmann, who was in my mother’s graduating class of New Braunfels High School in 1924. In 1935, Hoffmann was professor of languages at the University of Colorado. He said Alarcon fixed the royal standard (flag) of the King of Spain at the junction of the Guadalupe and Comal rivers and took possession of them. He and his men camped in this area.

Oscar Haas discovered a story dating back to the early 1860s stating that a large elephantine beast was discovered in the area of the junction buried way beneath the surface. An emigrant was prospecting for a well and came across a shoulder bone of a beast. He estimated it to be about 30 feet long and 20 feet high. Stories of remains of at least three Mastodons were found on the banks of the Comal River.

In 1968, Mrs. James Haile, owner of the junction property at that time, received a Texas Historical Marker as a historical site, certainly an important designation.

Archivist Keva Boardman examines a fragment of a Mastodon tooth in the Sophienburg collection discovered on the banks of the Comal.