Sisterdale Valley District

Sisterdale is a small Hill Country community in Kendall County, Texas, founded in 1847 in the valley of the two Sister Creeks. This historic district centers on Badenthal, a private farm whose buildings reflect the town's early German settlers. Nicholas Zink built a windowless log block house there around 1847. Ernst Kapp, a German professor and political refugee, bought it in 1850, expanded it with a dog run and second story, and added stone buildings used as a hydropathic institute in the 1850s. A log coachhouse, smithy, cypress barn, smokehouse and sugar press also survive. A second complex built by the Langbein family from the 1870s to 1910 shows the later generation of German farmers. An 1893 stone schoolhouse stands at the entrance. The district is significant as the only surviving physical record of Sisterdale's Latin Colony of educated German intellectuals and the transition to later immigrant farming families.