Luckenbach, Texas
|
|
Luckenbach is thirteen miles from Fredericksburg, Texas in southeastern Gillespie County, part of the Texas Hill Country. It consists of ten acres (40,000 m²) between South Grape Creek (a tributary of the Pedernales River) and Snail Creek, just south of U.S. Highway 290 on both sides of Ranch Road 1376.
Its oldest building is a combination general store and saloon opened in 1849 by Minna Engel, whose father was an itinerant preacher from Germany. The community, first named Grape Creek, was later named after Minna's husband, Carl Albert Luckenbach. Luckenbach was first established as a community trading post and was one of the few that never broke a peace treaty with the Comanche Indians, with whom they bartered and traded.
Its population increased to a high of 492 in 1904, but by the 1960s, Luckenbach was almost a ghost town.
An ad in the paper offering "town — pop. 3 — for sale" led Hondo Crouch, rancher and Texas folklorist, to buy Luckenbach for $30,000 in 1970, in partnership with Kathy Morgan and Guich Koock. While modern-day Luckenbach is part of Fredericksburg, Hondo used the town's rights as a municipality to govern the dance hall as he saw fit.
Country music
Luckenbach's association with country music began in the summer of 1973, when Jerry Jeff Walker, backed by the Lost Gonzo Band, recorded a live album there called Viva Terlingua. That album became an outlaw country classic.
Four years later (and a year after Crouch's death), Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson memorialized Luckenbach with the song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)."
Notable concert appearances in the town include Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Pat Green, Robert Earl Keen, and Lyle Lovett. The little community is still an active home to country music as of 2004.
External links
- Handbook of Texas Online entry (http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/LL/hnl48.html) from a University of Texas website
- Official site for Luckenbach (http://www.luckenbachtexas.com/) and the Luckenbach Dance Hall
- Texas town rooted in country music (http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/DESTINATIONS/11/05/luckenbach.texas.ap/index.html), a November 2004 CNN article