New Braunfels, Texas map

New Braunfels sits on I-35 between San Antonio, 32 miles southwest, and San Marcos, 18 miles northeast. It is right on the Balcones Escarpment: the ground west of town rises into the Hill Country, while the land east of I-35 flattens toward the coastal plain. That fault line is also why the springs are here — the Comal Springs at Landa Park, the largest spring system in Texas, rise where the aquifer meets the fault.

The city has spread across the Comal County line into Guadalupe County on the southeast. Comal County holds 575 square miles and reaches northwest to Canyon Lake and Spring Branch; Hays County is north, Bexar County southwest, and Kendall and Blanco counties west and northwest.

The Comal rises from the springs in Landa Park, runs through the middle of town and empties into the Guadalupe a short walk downstream — long enough for tube runs, short enough that the whole river fits inside the city. The Guadalupe comes down from Canyon Dam through a limestone canyon lined with outfitters along River Road, then swings around the south side of town. Both rivers stay cool year round, which is why New Braunfels turned into a summer river town rather than a farming one.

Landa Park, the old Landa family estate, holds the spring heads, a spring-fed pool and the Comal headwaters. Schlitterbahn opened here in 1979 and grew along the river beside the park. Wurstfest, a ten-day sausage-and-polka festival, runs each November on the Comal, and Gruene Hall, built in 1878 in the village of Gruene northwest of town, bills itself as the oldest continually operating dance hall in Texas. Gruene was a separate settlement until New Braunfels annexed it in 1979; its grain elevator, water tower and general store still stand above the Guadalupe.

The German founding still shows in street and family names — Seguin Avenue's Main Plaza, the Sophienburg museum on the hill where Prince Carl built his fort, and the Faust and Hinman Island crossings. Comal County keeps two other draws west of the city: Canyon Lake, a Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Guadalupe about 18 miles northwest, and Natural Bridge Caverns, a commercial cave southwest off FM-3009.