Luckenbach, Texas

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Location of 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. This location is about 50 miles north of San Antonio and about the same distance west of Austin.


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 actor 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.

[edit] 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 2006, where folks gather by the score to listen to area musicians and drink cold beer.

[edit] Visiting

Luckenbach enjoys a wide range of visitors each weekend, weather allowing. You will usually find a large number of bikers, bankers and everyone in between. There is usually a separate area for motorcycle parking and car parking is usually in the grass. All income levels and lifestyles can be found there. On Sundays, it is common for people to bring instruments and the crowd actually entertains themselves, taking turns on a hill, entertaining the crowd that sometimes reaches into a few hundred. You can buy hamburgers, roasted corn on the cob and beer, with Shiner Bock being a local favorite. You can also purchase a wide variety of Luckenbach related shirts, bumper stickers and other novelties. No hard liquor is allowed, and no law enforcement is necessary as the wildly diverse crowd tends to self police.

There are RV camping spots, (although their condition is unknown) and a small river that runs nearby where the signs clearly state "No Swimming Allowed". Of course this usually ignored and it is common to see parent there with their children. They have areas set up for pitching washers, which is similar in style to the game of horse shoes, except using a can buried in the ground and players toss large fender washers. It is common to see local and regional celebrities attending on Sunday, as this is the most relaxed day to visit. There is no charge to visit.

It is worth noting that you should have a map to get to Luckenbach or at the very least, good directions. The signs leading to the town are often stolen as souvenirs by tourists.

[edit] External links

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