Luckenbach, Texas # 2

by Allen Beatty

Title

Luckenbach, Texas # 2

Artist

Allen Beatty

Medium

Photograph - Photographs

Description

Luckenbach is an unincorporated community thirteen miles from Fredericksburg in southeastern Gillespie County, Texas, United States, part of the Texas Hill Country. Luckenbach is known as a venue for country music.
Its oldest building is a combination general store and saloon reputedly opened in 1849 (1886 is more likely, based on land improvement records of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission) by Minna Engel, whose father was an itinerant minister from Germany. The community, first named Grape Creek (perhaps really a faulty spelling of "Gap Creek", the literal meaning of "Luckenbach" in German), was later renamed after Engel's husband, Carl Albert Luckenbach. They would later move to another town which became Albert, Texas. Luckenbach was first established as a community trading post, one of a few that never broke a peace treaty with the Comanche Indians, with whom they traded.
Luckenbach's population increased to a high of 492 in 1904, but by the 1960s it was almost a ghost town. A newspaper advertisement offering "town — pop. 3 — for sale" led actor Guich Koock and Hondo Crouch, a rancher and Texas folklorist, to buy Luckenbach for $30,000 in 1970, in partnership with Kathy Morgan. Hondo's wife, Shatzi paid for the town, and Guich's wife, Patricia, worked as the bartender and bookkeeper giving their husbands all the glory. Guich used the town's rights as a municipality to govern the dance hall as he saw fit. The town has been host to many unique festivals including the Luckenbach Women's Chili Cookoff and The 1st Luckenbach World's Fair, where Willie Nelson made a surprise appearance.
Today Luckenbach maintains a ghost-town feel with its small population and strong western aesthetic. One of its two main buildings houses the remnants of a post office, a working saloon, and a general store. The other is the dance hall. The post office was closed on April 30, 1971 and its zip code (78647) was retired. The general store remains active as a souvenir shop where visitors can purchase a variety of items, including merchandise featuring the town's motto "Everybody's Somebody in Luckenbach" (made famous by the lyric in the Waylon Jennings song), postcards, T-shirts, sarcastic and humorous signs. Of course, Luckenbach was also immortalized by the Willie Nelson song of the same name.
Here we see a portion of the general store selling souvenirs beneath a portrait of Hondo Crouch.

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June 6th, 2019

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