In the mid-1800s, Fredericksburg Road ran 19 miles northwest of New Braunfels to one of the first safe Guadalupe River road crossings. Esser's Crossing at Spring Branch served for almost 150 years as a designated place for secure passage into the northwest portion of the state from New Braunfels and San Antonio to Johnson City and Fredericksburg. The crossing provided a safe, shallow, solid-rock river bottom crossing for pioneers with ox-drawn wagons and horse-drawn carriages. As early as 1850, this Guadalupe River crossing was known as Henderson Crossing. German immigrant Charles Esser, Sr. (1827-1902) settled in the area in 1858 and provided a public way-station along the route. Esser was a judge, justice of the peace, and school teacher, and he was instrumental in getting a postal station called Wesson in the area. Charles Beierle, Sr. served as postmaster from 1893 to 1907. When the crossing flooded, teamsters detoured to Fischer's store, Devil's Backbone, or Purgatory Road to cross by way of the 1887 Faust Street Bridge in New Braunfels. By 1903, the public and Comal County officials began discussing a second bridge to provide a high-water crossing over the Guadalupe River, and in 1904 the county commissioners court selected Esser's Crossing for the bridge. After construction, agricultural products were brought to the New Braunfels area from as far away as Johnson City. The wrought-iron Whipple Truss bridge, a popular style of the time, was completed in 1904. Designed for one-way traffic, it carried a sign forbidding fast driving or riding or driving more than ten head of livestock on the bridge at any one time. In 1923, Esser's Crossing Bridge became an official United States Geological Station, with area residents serving as gauge attendants to record annual data. The 1904 bridge was later condemned and removed in 1979.