NEW BRAUNFELS FIRST FIRE STATION 1918
The New Braunfels Fire Museum is located at 131 Hill Avenue in New Braunfels, Texas. Before it became a museum, however, it served as the city's first fire station. Constructed in 1918 near the central part of New Braunfels, it housed the city's motorized fire trucks and other firefighting equipment. It continued to serve as Fire Station No. 1 for almost seventy years, until April 1987 when a new Fire Station No. 1 was built next door. Today, 2017, New Braunfels had six fire stations.
The idea of converting the 1918 fire station building to a museum came from Battalion Chief Darren Brinkkoeter who joined the fire department in 1993, and whose father, Roger Brinkkoeter, served with the department. Fortunately, his idea was adopted and having the Fire Museum likely saved the fate of much of the town's original firefighting equipment, which is now on display there. The museum had its grand opening in 1995, on the 150th anniversary of the founding of New Braunfels.
A tour conducted by Darren Brinkkoeter takes visitors back to the earliest times of New Braunfels when there was only the most basic firefighting equipment, buckets of water carried by the local citizens' unofficial bucket brigade. Starting with the display of the special water buckets, you see the evolution to such firefighting equipment as hose carts, hooks and ladders, and finally some of the early-motorized fire trucks used by the fire department.
