History
The river was first called after Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe by Alonso de León in 1689. It was renamed the San Augustin by Domingo Terán de los Ríos who maintained a colony on the river, but the name Guadalupe persisted. Many explorers referred to the current Guadalupe as the San Ybón above its confluence with the Comal, and instead the Comal was called the Guadalupe. Evidence indicates that the river has been home to humans for several thousand years, including the Karankawa, Tonkawa, and Huaco (pronounced like Waco) Indians.
Being led by Prince Solms, 228 pioneer immigrants from Germany traveled overland from Indianola to the site chosen to be the first German settlement in Texas, New Braunfels. Upon reaching the Guadalupe River, the pioneers found the river too high to cross due to the winter rains. Prince Solms, perhaps wishing to impress the others with his bravado, plunged into the raging waters and crossed the swollen river on horseback. Not to be outdone by anyone, Betty Holekamp immediately followed and successfully crossed the river. Thus Betty Holekamp is known as the first white woman to cross the Guadalupe on horseback.
A sudden flash flood on the river on 17 July 1987 near Comfort swept a bus away from a nearby road. Forty-three people were on the bus at the time as it left a church camp. Ten drowned, while the rest were rescued, mostly from treetops. On April 18, 1989, the story of the deaths and rescues and this flood was aired on the pilot episode of Rescue 911 and it was later made into a television movie called Flood: Who Will Save Our Children?.
Read more about this topic: Guadalupe River (Texas)
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“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
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