For many years, we rented our three cottages to the general public. That has now changed in keeping with a parallel change in our mission. Effective January 1, 2018, those cottages became the guest quarters for our family ranch, and are now made available only to our own friends and acquaintences.

The direction we are moving has to do with our vision for our family ranch. As you may know, our three cottages are situated on the banks of the Guadalupe River on the southern end of a 390 acre ranch which has been in our family since the 1850's and is quite significant to the history of this area.

Our great great great grandfather Wilhelm M. Sattler came over in the 1840's from Germany with a nobleman-adventurer known as Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and a hearty band of enthusiastic German settlers who loved the Texas Hill Country because it both captured their imagination as an exotic place of wild open spaces and the opportunity to carve out an exciting new life, but also because the rolling hills, streams and rivers reminded them of home back in the old country.

Grandpa Sattler settled first in nearby New Braunfels, became an influential community leader while serving also as a Texas state government official up the road in Austin. It wasn't long, however, before he decided it was time to move a bit further out into the country and be more of a true pioneer. So, he sold his property in New Braunfels (known back then as Comal Town) and purchased several pieces of ranch land twenty miles or so further west on the beautiful cypress and Spanish Moss-lined banks of the Guadalupe River. He built a home there for his family and a log building where he set up shop as the first postmaster in the area. The home is still on the ranch, remodelled a few times, and occupied to this day by our family. His old log post office is still there, now designated as a Texas historical site. And the local town bears his name: Sattler, Texas.

We have embarked on a new mission: to protect the flora and fauna with whom we share our increasingly fragile ecosystem, while preserving both the historical legacy and the natural beauty of our little piece of the Texas Hill Country.

Since making the change, we have been systematically phasing out our cows and other livestock (except for a handful of pets). And, with assistance from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, we have been endeavoring to return those pastures and wooded areas to their natural state, the way they were nearly two hundred years ago when the Sattler family built their homestead here--before Canyon Lake was created by construction of the dam (in 1963) and the area rapidly became carpeted over with subdivisions, shopping malls, resorts, and recreational activities.

Restoring an ecosystem that is in peril is an arduous, expensive and scientific undertaking. And, unfortunately, it no longer leaves room for weekend tubers and the party crowd. Our cottages can no longer be rented out to the general public. We are now forced to restrict the guest list to a few select "partners" we have known personally for many years, our own family members and friends. Those individuals are already on our Membership roster.

Stop by and visit when you are in the vicinity. We are on the famous FM-306 horseshoe, at the double river crossing, near Canyon Lake. Hope we see you soon.