New Braunfels has been home to one of the biggest and best events in the state of Texas. The annual WURSTFEST festival offers a unique blend of German heritage and Texan fun! It’s an opportunity for folks from far and wide to come together for great food, good beer and live entertainment from over 40 local, national, and international performers.
Proclaimed by the Mayor for the first time in 1961, the festival honoring this most delectable of local foods was a one-day affair held on Saturday climaxing a week of activity featuring sausage dishes on menus of local cafes and specials on sausage products in local meat markets and grocery stores.
The first year it was “Sausage Festival” … later “Wurst Week” … and finally “WURSTFEST”. What he thought would be a typical small town festival was conceived by Ed A. Grist, who was a practicing Veterinarian and City Meat Inspector. At the time, no one anticipated the phenomenal success this festival would achieve.
The first WURSTFEST drew a crowd of 2,000 sausage-hungry visitors attracted by literally world-wide publicity … there were feature stories on this unique celebration in newspapers in Canada and Germany, as well as most major cities in the United States. Although scheduled to take place in Landa Park, threatening weather caused the first festival to move to the National Guard Armory.
10 days of unrivaled fun
Traditional German costumes, crafts, souvenirs, and delicacies rule the day in this Texas-style Oktoberfest. From carnival rides to polkas to sausage on a stick, there’s something here for everyone. Located on the spacious family-friendly and accessible Wurstfest grounds, the festival begins every year on the first Friday in November and runs for 10 days. This year, the fun will be raging from Friday, November 1 through Saturday, November 10. Several corresponding community events also spring during that same time throughout New Braunfels.
A big event for a big state
Begun as a promotional event for the city’s sausage-making industry, Wurstfest has exploded into one of the largest and most exciting cultural events in the country. Fifty-two years after its humble beginning, Wurstfest is better than ever and was recently rated the #3 event in the state of Texas, behind only San Antonio’s annual Fiesta celebration and the Texas State Fair.
The largest day in festival history was recorded on Saturday, November 7, 2009.
Wurstfest is a non-profit corporation designed to promote local commerce, especially through tourism, and preserve the community’s heritage. It provides a vehicle for local civic organizations to raise large amounts of money for a wide variety of community projects. Wurstfest is a special event that visitors can attend, enjoy themselves, and leave gratified, knowing that their expenditures will go for worthwhile projects.
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HOMEFIELD carries the Big Green Egg and the Grilla for the special someone on your gift list that enjoys cooking. We carry Rainbow Play Systems, Goalsetter Basketball Systems and Springfree Trampolines for family fun. We also have magical Playhouses for all the special little ones in your lives. Our showrooms in New Braunfels or Corpus Christi make it easy for you to create the backyard that will enrich your daily life. HOMEFIELD has done the work for you by assembling a large and growing range of unique outdoor living products you won’t find anywhere else along with the area’s finest contractors into a single 50,000 square foot outdoor showroom. Come visit us and learn more about what makes HOMEFIELD the leader in innovative outdoor living.
