SCHERTZ, TEXAS. Schertz is on the Bexar-Guadalupe county line and Farm Road 78, two miles southeast of Interstate Highway 35 and nineteen miles west of Seguin. It was named for Sebastian Schertz, who had a store there in 1875 when the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway built through the area. A post office called Cutoff opened at the community in 1884; the name was changed to Schertz in 1899. In 1890 the town had a cotton gin, a grocery, and an estimated 200 residents. By 1914 it included a church, a bank, and a hotel. The population remained at about 350 from the early 1930s to the late 1950s, but thereafter rapidly increased because of nearby Interstate Highway 35 and the outward expansion of San Antonio. When Schertz was incorporated in 1964, it reported 2,281 residents and twenty-four businesses; in 1988 it had 7,576 residents and eighty-six businesses. In 1990 the population of Schertz was 10,555, and the city had expanded into Comal County. The population grew to 18,694 in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Willie Mae Weinert, An Authentic History of Guadalupe County (Seguin, Texas: Seguin Enterprise, 1951; rpt. 1976).
