Hill Country Backroads: Showing the Way in Comal County

By Laurie E. Jasinski

The Guadalupe River Drive in the Texas Hill Country, now approaching its 100th anniversary, began as a small path carved from the rocky hillside. Today called River Road, this popular tourist destination is enjoyed by both residents of and visitors to New Braunfels.

In Hill Country Backroads: Showing the Way in Comal County, Laurie E. Jasinski explores the time when roads such as the Guadalupe River Drive were unknown and unexplored. A time when it was nearly impossible to reach your destination without having to change a few tires or find a team of mules to pull you out of the mud. A time when a journey was an adventure.

Jasinski spent nearly a decade researching the early history of motoring and tourism in the area. Hill Country Backroads combines the setting of the Hill Country in the early 1900s with a historical narrative of Joe Sanders, Jasinki's grandfather, who was central to making the countryside of Comal County accessible to visitors and residents. Sanders improved travel in the area by creating the first scenic map of Comal County and implementing a system of road signs to label the county's confusing byways. Sanders' passion for travel and his attempt to show others how to enjoy life are driving forces throughout the book.

Sanders' scenic maps of the area are reproduced along with original photographs of the characters, landscape, and automobiles of the period. Interviews with people who knew Sanders provide fascinating insight into this man and his contributions to Hill Country tourism.

Hill Country Backroads combines two distinct but interwoven elements: the setting of the Hill Country in the early 1900s and the life of Joe Sanders. This rich compilation of historical events and human interaction is irresistible.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0875652395
• ISBN13: 9780875652399
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Texas Christian University Press
• Length: 202 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Life and Times of an Unusually Helpful Man

---One of several possible ways to read Laurie Jasinski's HILL COUNTRY BACKROADS is as a straightforward biography of her maternal grandfather, Joe Sanders. And very good biography it is, of the "life and times variety." Joe Sanders was 14 in 1909 when a driver stopped the first car (a 1904 Oldsmobile) he had ever seen in front of his family's farm outside Ottoville in northwestern Ohio. That day began a lifelong romance with automobiling. A few years later, having had first typhoid fever and then pneumonia, young Joe followed his doctor's advice and went south for his health. After a few months in the seat of Comal County, Texas, New Braunfels, he enlisted in the army for World War I. Once mustered out, he returned to New Braunfels and went to work for decades as a chauffeur and mechanic for the wealthy German-American Hippolyt Dittlinger. He married the author's grandmother and began exploring by car and on foot the nearby limestone Hill Country above New Braunfels.---The author sets her grandfather's life and achievements against times when the automobile was new, the Hill Country was still wild and woolly, tourism was just starting up and unwary travelers frequently got lost for lack of any signs on the back roads indicating where they were or how far from the next town. Joe Sanders made it a personal mission to help stranded tourists. He enlisted others to help him place sign posts throughout the back country. Between 1933 and 1960 he compiled data for a series of accurate, increasingly detailed and colorful maps of Comal County and the sights no visitor should miss. These included sweeping mountain vistas, caverns, rivers, streams, ranches, wildlife and on and on. He also took hundreds of photographs converted by himself and friends into postcards to attract more tourists to the Hill Country.--The well researhed book sketches the evolution of American motoring, tourism, techniques for building roads and the benefits maps can bring to a community eager to make itself known. A simple story of American caring and getting things done.