By Keva Hoffman Boardman —

The Six Shooter Ranch. The name evokes something rather wonderful in an old-Western-movie kind of way. However, dear reader, the history around the Six Shooter Ranch is anything but romantic. There are tales from different time periods which give us clues to its story and with some sniffing around, I think I have got the gist.

I first found a paragraph in the Marjorie Cook files. She was a feature writer/editor for the NB Herald.

Six Shooter Ranch was owned by Coreths and got its name from a man named John Sippel (who married a daughter of Ernst Gruene, Sr. Sippel lived in the house there and used to get drunk, lie on his bed and shoot flies with his six-shooter. The ceiling was full of holes as a result. The house stood on top of the hill adjoining the Eden Home. This was levelled for crushed rock by Landa on a lease from Coreth. Just before the house was torn down, it served as a bordello.

Is your interest peaked? Are there facts to back up any of this tale?

A transcript of an interview with Coreth Family descendants fills in some details of the location.

At one time they [Coreths] owned property from Mission Hill all the way over to the Eden Home. My uncle Rochette Coreth referred to it as the Six Shooter Ranch. There was a quarry there on the edge. That was in 1913, when Landa wanted to establish a rock quarry on the Coreth property and [paperwork] refers to it as the Six Shooter Ranch.

I looked into the land area a little closer and it seems that it was first owned by Ernst Gruene. His daughter Johanna and husband John Sippel lived on the property when they got married in 1873. In 1887, Sippel opened a rock quarry on the hill to get rock and gravel for the construction of the Guadalupe River Bridge (Faust St. Bridge). Sippel later recovered an 8-pound mammoth tooth at the site. The Coreth’s then acquired the land and they leased it to Landa to quarry gravel.

Olinska Sippel Posey, one of the daughters of John and Johanna Sippel, shared a very personal insight on her family. John built a home on the corner of Academy and Coll in 1881, and that’s where she lived so she didn’t live on the Six Shooter Ranch. She did remember that her father was a little bit crazy and dangerous. Olinska remembered that father John took her to visit her Gruene grandparents who lived on Rock Street one day. They crossed the San Antonio Street bridge, went through Comaltown and at the railroad tracks there on Rock Street, John told her to get out and walk the rest of the way. As she walked, he shot his gun several times over her head to hurry her along.

Olinska’s mother Johanna had a mental breakdown in 1893. Olinska said her mother felt she had to file for divorce in 1894. After her husband shot himself in the head on the second floor of his Phoenix saloon in 1900, Johanna Gruene Sippel lived until 1942.

Doesn’t this recollection just break your heart? Here is a bit more of the Sippels’ story.

John was the son of Valentin Sippel, one of NB’s first founders. John was quite the entrepreneur. He and father Valentin built the first Phoenix Saloon — same location, different building — in 1873. Off and on he lived on the 2nd floor of “Sippel Hall” and rented out the first-floor saloon. He also added an alligator pond and a bowling alley. In 1885 he became the local distributor for Anheuser-Busch. John set up a soda and mineral water bottling works, St. John’s Bottling, in 1886. In 1887, he opened the quarry at the Six Shooter Ranch. He added an ice factory to his line of businesses and became the distributor for Lone Star Beer in 1890.

I think his world started falling apart in 1892. His 18-year-old, first-born son Henry was shot and died while at business college in Dallas. The Sippels’ had already lost a two-year-old daughter in 1883. Henry’s death caused Johanna to have a mental breakdown and require several months of hospitalization. John was having a hard time financially as well. The bottling works went bankrupt after a bad freeze and it and the ice factory were put up for sale. Johanna filed for divorce and six years later, most likely depressed and drinking, John shot himself.

Perhaps this is the origen of the “drunk and shooting the flies on the ceiling” story; so much trauma and heartache for this man and his family to handle.

My last reference to Six-Shooter Ranch is later in time. Hanno Welsch Sr. recorded an oral history at the Sophienburg and told an interesting story. His family lived on a farm out on River Road and Rock Street. Remember that the ranch house of the Six Shooter Ranch was located about where the Eden Home and Dean Word’s pit is now.

There was a fella by the name of Clapp, of Clapp Shoe Company. He was living up there. He was a playboy. I imagine they gave him lots of money to get him away from their business. He hooped it up! He had some nice black horses and a buggy; well-groomed. He’d go to town and meet these girls. He’d get a pretty girl from off the train and have big parties there. And he liked six shooters, pistols and stuff like that. He was shooting at the fella that was working in the field on Rock Street, and, of course, once in awhile this fella would shoot back too you know. I don’t know but I think they were both drunk. They couldn’t hit a target.

Finally. I think I understand the bordello reference in Marjorie Cook’s notes. Mr. Welsch also talks about the “pretty ladies” which came in on the train. Behind the depot was a one-story house about 30 feet long with a porch along the sidewalk of Mill Street. The mostly dark and shuttered house was “verboten to us youngsters” but Welsch and his friends would slip over to the windows and listen to the “sweet talk”. Hanno describes how the ladies would come in by train, pulling up their skirts above the ankle as they stepped down onto the ground. There were always a lot of cowboys ready to help and then escort the ladies to the “entertainment house”. I think the Clapp gentleman at the Six Shooter Ranch would bring “these girls” to the ranch house to party.

So it looks like I’ve figured out quite a bit of the story. But Mr. Welsch gave me one more tantalizing tidbit connected to Six Shooter Ranch. One day Hanno’s father was plowing in the field down on the corner of Rock Street and he plowed up an old pistol.

It was a very peculiar pistol. It was originally a rim fire and it had been converted into a center pin fire pistol. It had beautiful engraving on it and a nice wooden handle. It must have come from the Six Shooter Ranch somehow.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum: Neu Braunfelser Zeitung; New Braunfels Herald; Marjorie Cook Collection; Myra Lea Adams Goff Collection; Hanno Welsch Sr. “Reflections” oral history.

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By Tara V. Kohlenberg —

How do we pick topics for Around the Sophienburg? you might ask. Well, a myriad of mysteries and ideas come across our desks, but this one came simply from the question, “Whatever happened to that armadillo guy?”

First off, let me tell you how we got “armadillo guy”. In the 1970s Country music was spreading across the U.S. like wildfire when country musicians Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Jeff Walker and others escaped the constraints of Nashville and became known for their Outlaw Country sound, which took root in Texas. Suddenly, it was cool to wear hats and boots, dance the two-step and essentially be anything that was Texan.

The promoters of Lone Star Beer, The National Beer of Texas, played off the whole Texan theme. Leon Burns, a New Braunfels restaurant manager, attended a Lone Star Beer event in San Antonio where they held armadillo races at Hemisfair Plaza. The event was such a hit, that the Lone Star marketing team began traveling all over the U.S., creating Armadillo Races in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and more just to promote Lone Star Beer.

Leon Burns and Bill Daughtery and about five other individuals formed the New Braunfels Armadillo Association. They decided that there should be a championship style event for all of the big city winners to race in. They contacted this young marketing guy named Jim Schmidt, who was fresh out of University of Houston. Jim was also the force behind the very successful “Luv Ya, Blue!” promotion for the Houston Oilers. In August 1979, the first International Invitational Armadillo Races took place at the Comal County Fair Grounds. It was a one-day event boasting The Derrick Dolls cheerleaders, food booths, beer, and music all afternoon. The “armadillo athletes” were rounded up from local ranches. Barry Jaroszewski not only ran a booth called Barry’s Rent-a-dillo, he provided the beer license through his Under-Pass Saloon. It was relatively successful.

The following year in 1980, Urban Cowboy with John Travolta was released. The Texas cowboy craze consumed everything and everybody. Could it be any cooler to be Texan? The Armadillo Races morphed into a three-day event called the Armadillo Olympics. Their flyer read “see highly trained armadillo athletes competing in a variety of breath-taking events.” Their logo had an armadillo sporting running shoes and cowboy hat in front of Olympic rings. The event was held at the end of August in an open field on the I-35 access road that sits between what is now Walmart Distribution Center and the back of Creekside Shopping Center. There was a chili cook off, five-acre carnival, hot air balloons, arts & crafts, sky divers, booths by non-profit organizations, food and beer. They held a dance every night featuring Ernest Tubb, Roy Head, the Geezinslaw Brothers and more. There were reports of 30,000 people in attendance, which is absolutely amazing.

In 1981, the NBAA learned to deal with their celebrity. Burns said they received a cease-and-desist letter from the International Olympic committee. The Association could not use the word Olympics or the rings in the logo. Great! They changed the ‘O’ to an ‘A’ and moved on to obtaining festival permits. Judge Max Wommack listened to over an hour’s worth of complaints about noise, trash, dust, and trespassing from area residents before granting the permit. Think about that. I-35 was so narrow (two lanes each way) that the people living on the other side of it complained about noise and trash from the festival. Those were the days. Burns said it was the biggest ever, estimating over 45, 000 people in attendance and cars backed up to Hiway 46 to get in, but not a lot of money was made.

After the collapse of the New Braunfels Armadillo Association, Jim Schmidt created the Texas Armadillo Association headquartered in New Braunfels for the preservation, protection and promotion of the Texas nine-banded armadillo. He and his Armadillo Rangers, including locals like Lee Rodriguez, continued to drive all over America with Arnie the Armadillo, making appearances on Regis & Kathy Lee, PM Magazine news shows in every market and of course, at schools, fairs and trade shows. He even rode the Texas float in the 1989 Inaugural Parade for President H.W. Bush.

It was during the first State of the Union Address of H.W. Bush that Jim Schmidt responded to something he heard the President say. He heard a plea to help him and Barbara continue Nancy Reagan’s platform of “Just Say No” to drugs. Jim Schmidt, taking his cue from Ephesians 6:11 “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes”, formed the Put On Your Armor Foundation, a non-profit to help armor children and protect them from drugs, crime and violence. He and his Armadillo Rangers have traveled internationally with USDA approved armadillos, educating and entertaining millions of kids. Who knew that a giant beer-fest with armadillos would turn into a non-profit educational career.

Oh, but, wait. There is more. Armadillo Jim left New Braunfels in 1995 for Oklahoma to attend Bible college. There he married and has three children. He has devoted his life to building a children’s ministry, helping to instill good character and Christian values in our youth; raising awareness for abused and missing children, and providing resources for grief recovery. During his career, he has appeared at well over 1000 schools, 750 conventions, special events, trade shows and meetings, 120 state and county fairs/festivals, and community outreaches and many church crusades and meetings. Armadillo Jim Schmidt and his side-kick Arnie Armadillo continue to live a blessed and full life, spreading the Word through what I have always considered to be a nuisance in my garden. The wonder of the smallest creatures never ceases to amaze me.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives; GuideStar.org; Alton Rahe; Jim Schmidt; Leon Burns; Barry Jaroszewski; Lee Rodriguez.

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