Gruene, Texas, has its roots in the influx of German settlers who arrived in Texas in the 1840’s. Ernst Gruene and his bride, Antoinette, were among the group that settled in New Braunfels.

In 1872, Ernst and his two sons, Ernst Jr. and Heinrich, purchased land four miles northwest of New Braunfels in the community of Goodwin. There they organized a tenant farm system for raising cotton, and the town later became known as Gruene.

Heinrich D. Gruene, better known as H.D., is credited with the actual founding of the town. In 1878, he opened a mercantile store where tenants of the Gruene settlement could buy goods on credit and pay for them after the harvest. H.D. later built a cotton gin from the old gristmill (now the Gristmill River Restaurant & Bar) to process the crops raised by his tenants and other farmers.

The town of Gruene thrived through the first two decades of the twentieth century, but with H.D.’s death in 1920, the town began its decline. In 1925, the boll weevil destroyed the cotton fields. The automobile gave villagers more mobility and took them away to new jobs in Austin and San Antonio. Then, like the rest of the country, Gruene was crushed by the stock market crash of 1929.

The Gruene family struggled to keep the mercantile store open and continued extending credit to area farmers. Eventually even this became impossible and Gruene, as a community, virtually ceased to exist. The only thing that continued to operate through the economic ups and downs was Gruene Hall.

In the 1940's, the town briefly came back to life when a wool processing plant occupied the mercantile after World War II. But the manufacturer soon moved on and took with it the town’s new vitality. Another brief respite came in 1966 when saddle makers Hadlock & Fox Manufacturing of San Antonio moved its factory into the abandoned Gruene mercantile store. But, saddles couldn’t revive the entire community in an era of fast travel and easy mobility.

In 1975, Gruene was brought back to life as a center for music, shopping, dining and history by a group of Texas visionairies, and the rest, as they say, is history.