Spring Branch TX October Events 2026: Festivals and History

A mile off Highway 46, at the end of Anhalt Road, there is a 6,000-square-foot oak dance floor. It was laid in 1908, and it sits inside a hall whose oldest section dates to 1879. On the third Sunday of October, the group that built the hall throws the same party it has held at Anhalt since 1877, two years before the hall's first section went up. This year that Sunday is October 18.

Anhalt is one of three October dates in Spring Branch with roots in the same decade. A week earlier, a parish founded in 1876 serves pot roast and German potato salad at its yearly festival. A week later, a library talk and a guided visit open the 1872 ranch house of one of the area's first immigrant families, which sits on land the public usually can't enter. The groups behind these events were never set up to coordinate a calendar. They all grew out of the German families who arrived along this part of the Guadalupe in the 1850s and 1860s, and each one still shows up in October.

A Cattle Brand That Became a Dance Hall

The Germania Farmer Verein started in 1875 as a practical fix for a practical problem. According to the Texas State Historical Association, members formed the association to protect their cattle. They branded their herds with a shared "G" and alerted neighbors and law officers when rustling happened. It worked well enough that the group got a state charter on February 7, 1876. The hall's own history dates the Verein's founding meeting to October 4, 1875, which means the association turns 151 today.

The settlement around the hall is older still. TSHA says German immigrants first settled near Anhalt in 1855, and by 1859 the spot was called Krause Settlement. It sat at the midpoint on the trail between New Braunfels and Boerne, where freight haulers watered their animals and rested. In 1879 the post office opened and the community took the name Anhalt. One explanation for the name is that it means "stopping place" in German.

Oktoberfest got its start from a picnic. After a successful gathering in May 1877, the Verein decided to hold a fall festival showing off field and garden products and livestock. The Texas Historical Commission's marker describes the pair of Verein festivals as a spring planting celebration and a fall harvest celebration. Today the hall's site lists Maifest and Oktoberfest on the third Sundays of May and October, and it says festival proceeds go toward preserving and improving the hall. That makes an Oktoberfest plate a small contribution to the roof over the 1908 floor.

The 2026 details are simple:

• When: Sunday, October 18, noon to 6 p.m.
• Where: Anhalt Halle, 2390 Anhalt Road, Spring Branch
• Admission: Free
• Music: Oompah from the Jodie Mikula Orchestra, plus dancing
• Food: German food. The hall hasn't posted a menu or prices.

TSHA describes the traditional Oktoberfest meal as pot roast, peas, potato salad and sauerkraut. The floor has a guest list beyond polka bands. George Strait played Anhalt Hall with the Ace in the Hole Band at a Smithson Valley High School FFA dance in 1978, and a scene from All the Pretty Horses was filmed there.

One Week Earlier, the Same Plate

On Sunday, October 11, the Honey Creek Festival takes over St. Joseph Catholic Church at 25781 State Hwy 46 W from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free.

The dining hall menu is pot roast, fried chicken, German potato salad, sauerkraut and green beans. Seated service runs 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and to-go plates are available until 2:30. So the two biggest community meals of a Spring Branch October, a week and about a dozen miles of Hwy 46 apart, put nearly the same German Sunday dinner on the table. Honey Creek also has Tex-Mex. Booths sell enchiladas, nachos, mini tacos, bratwurst and sauerkraut, sausage on a stick, turkey legs and sweets, all paid for with $1 tickets.

The afternoon schedule covers bingo, live and silent auctions, a prize drawing, booths, a dunk tank, a bungee run, an obstacle course and a bounce house. Free entertainment comes from the Happy Musicians Band, the St. Joseph Children's group and Folklorico.

This year matters more than most because the parish is marking 150 years, 1876 to 2026. The festival site doesn't say when the festival itself started, so the anniversary belongs to the parish. Its history tracks the same arrival pattern as Anhalt. Settlement in the Honey Creek area goes back to the 1850s, and German Catholic families came in the 1860s. Local lore says the community got its name from bees swarming over the creek. Father Kossbiel celebrated the first St. Joseph Mass on August 20, 1876. A stone church built in 1910 to 1912 was the main church until the current building went up in 2006.

The Ranch Under Both State Parks

The third date explains where those settler families actually lived. Many people in Spring Branch know Guadalupe River State Park and Honey Creek State Natural Area as two separate places. Both were once one family's cattle and sheep ranch.

On Saturday, October 24, the Friends of Guadalupe River State Park and Honey Creek State Natural Area present "Early Settlers of Honey Creek Area: The Doeppenschmidt and Weidner Families." The talk runs 10:30 a.m. to noon in Meeting Room C at the Mammen Family Public Library, 131 Bulverde Crossing, Bulverde, and uses photographs and documents from the families' ranch.

The history fits in a few transactions. Jacob Doeppenschmidt came from Germany in 1854 at age 47 with his wife, Marianne, and five children. In 1869 he paid $130 for 160 acres. His son Adam built the ranch house in 1872 and had grown the property to 4,000 acres by 1910. That year he sold it to two second-generation German immigrants, Otto Carl Weidner and Fritz Wilhelm Rust. The Weidners stayed in Adam's 1872 house, which still stands inside the State Natural Area. The Rust family took the land west of Honey Creek and in 1917 built what's now called the Rust House, which is inside Guadalupe River State Park today. In other words, the creek that splits the two public properties was once just a line through a family ranch.

From 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., there's an optional visit to the Doeppenschmidt-Weidner Homestead. The stops are Adam and Peter Doeppenschmidt's homesteads and Jacob Doeppenschmidt's grave site. Sara Weidner Turner, a descendant of Otto Carl Weidner who often visited her grandparents at the ranch in the 1960s, will lead a conversation in the picnic area in front of the old ranch house. TPWD explains why this part of the day matters:

"This area of the State Natural Area is not open to the public except for special occasions like this."

Registration opened October 3 at 10:30 a.m., and TPWD lists it as required. The program is for ages 13 and older. The library's own event page is less consistent. It marks registration as required in one place and only encouraged in another. Signing up through the library's registration link takes care of either reading.

October Around the Three Big Dates

The rest of the month fits around these events. The state park's own October calendar includes a Halloween night hike the evening before the settlers talk and a star party that same night, so October 24 can run from a 10:30 a.m. library talk to an 8 p.m. telescope session.

The Honey Creek guided walks happen on Saturdays and Sundays all month, and every listing says registration is required. Bulverde Market Day sets up on the second and fourth Saturdays with more than 25 vendors selling art, handmade goods and specialty foods. Texas State Parks Day on November 1 brings free admission to Guadalupe River State Park, the western half of the old Doeppenschmidt ranch.

If an afternoon on the Anhalt dance floor or a walk past the 1872 ranch house has you wondering about land along this stretch of Hwy 46, Ashley Lomas knows these back roads well and is glad to talk through what's out here, from acreage near Anhalt to homes in the Honey Creek area. Let's Connect.