Otto Brinkmann House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

From the record

“The Otto Brinkmann House in Comfort, Texas, United States, was built in 1861 by Otto Brinkmann. It was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1976 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.”
Wikipedia article Otto Brinkmann House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 12 National Register listings published here for Kendall County · listed in 1977 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Listed as. Brinkmann, Otto, House - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. 701 High St., Comfort, 78013
When was it listed? December 1977
Category. building
Census division. Comfort
National Register reference number. 77001457 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

75 since 2006

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 75 fires within 5 miles of Otto Brinkmann House between 2006 and 2020, burning about 296 acres in total. 2 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	33
Debris and open burning	22
Equipment and vehicle use	12
Smoking	3
Natural	2
Power generation/transmission/distribution	2
Misuse of fire by a minor	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
6 September 2011	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	30 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	609 FM 289
4 September 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Texas A & M Forest Service	100 BLK OF SCHLADOER
29 September 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	IH 10 WB 528 MM
27 September 2008	Equipment and vehicle use	2.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	not named
24 September 2008	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	not named
19 September 2018	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	1621 BURN PILE
17 September 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Texas A & M Forest Service	519 MM EB IH10
16 September 2009	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	100 BLK PEEK RANCH RD

Every fire recorded in Kendall County

Storms near this property

27 since 1993

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Comfort, the town this property stands in, in 27 storm reports between 1993 and 2026: 15 hail, 6 flash flood, 4 thunderstorm wind, 2 tornado. The reports record 1 death. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
May 2016	Flash Flood	Comfort	1 killed	A young lady drowned on Cypress Creek near the intersection of Highway 27 and Water Street in Comfort. The car was swept off into the creek due to heavy rain. Two occupants made it to safety. One other occupant drowned and was recovered several miles downstream.
July 2025	Flash Flood	Comfort	$5,000,000	There was catastrophic flash flooding along the Guadalupe River after around ten inches of rain fell in approximately four hours over the headwaters of the river. The flood wave moved downstream into Kendall County. Water from the Guadalupe backed up Cypress Creek in Comfort. Water was 5.6 feet above the bridge on 7th St in Comfort.
October 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Comfort	$100,000	Severe thunderstorm winds blew roofs off homes in the Comfort area.
March 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Comfort	$80,000	Damaging winds knocked over several trees and damaged a home just south of Comfort in a path that ran from north to south. The winds tore a patio roof off the house, lifted it up over the roof and deposited it on the south side of the house. Some of the trees damaged in the area had diameters of over 12 inches. The winds were preceded by heavy rain, and followed by hail and a small tornado.
October 1993	Hail	Comfort	$50,000	Golf ball to baseball-size hail was reported in Comfort. The County Sheriff's Office reported a large signs blown down and wind damage to a gas pump in Boerne. Several cars were damaged across the County.
October 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Comfort	$10,000	A thunderstorm produced wind gusts estimated at 60 mph that tore some metal roofing and solar panels off a house near Comfort.
October 1993	Hail	Comfort	$5,000	Golf ball to baseball-size hail was reported in Comfort. The County Sheriff's Office reported a large signs blown down and wind damage to a gas pump in Boerne. Several cars were damaged across the County.
March 2026	Hail	Comfort	-	A thunderstorm produced up to lime sized hail in Comfort.
April 2023	Hail	Comfort	-	A thunderstorm produced quarter size hail in Comfort.
April 2022	Hail	Comfort	-	A thunderstorm produced quarter size hail in Comfort.
April 2022	Hail	Comfort	-	A thunderstorm produced quarter size hail in Comfort.
April 2009	Flash Flood	Comfort	-	There were reports of several low waters crossings being flooded along Highway 473.
March 2007	Flash Flood	Comfort	-	A general 2 to 3 inch rain over northern Kendall County resulted in numerous rural roads cut by flash flooding through the afternoon. FM473 and FM1376 were closed near Sisterdale.
February 2005	Hail	Comfort	-	The hail broke windows in homes and vehicles and damaged the bodies of vehicles in the area.
May 2005	Flash Flood	Comfort	-	Between 1 and 2 inches of rain fell between Comfort and Sisterdale, with up to 4 inch totals just south of Comfort. FM473 was closed due to flash flooding east of Comfort. FM1376 was closed south of Sisterdale.
June 2005	Tornado (F0)	Comfort	-	An NWS survey found evidence of a tornado that struck at the southeast end of the wind damage area in Kendall County, about one mile south of the Waring exit off IH10. Trees at one home in this area again showed severe damage with many broken off above the ground and others blown over. However in this one case the tree limbs and trees were not oriented toward the southeast but instead were generally laid down in all different directions. The home within 50 yards of the damage area suffered no damage at all. This change in orientation, along with the very narrow area, the well defined nature of the path, and stronger level of damage, led the team to conclude that the damage was caused by a small and short-lived tornado. The tornado was rated as F0.
June 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Comfort	-	Widespread severe damage from the line of thunderstorms was also found along SH27 between Center Point and Comfort in Kendall County. Large tree limbs were knocked out of trees and healthy mesquite trees of up to 8 inches in diameter were broken off above the ground or blown over completely. This level of damage continued eastward to just beyond Comfort. It appeared to stretch southward from this portion of SH27 for around 4 miles.
August 2004	Flash Flood	Comfort	-	Thunderstorms over western Kendall County produced general 1 to 2 inch totals. Highest amounts were near 3 inches between Comfort and Boerne, where several roads, including FM1376 and FM473 were closed due to the flooding.
March 2003	Tornado (F0)	Comfort	-	A small tornado developed behind the damaging winds, heavy rain, and large hail, moving southward for three-fourths of a mile, then lifting. It did not appear to have caused any damage
March 1995	Hail	Comfort	-	Sheriff's department reports golf ball-sized hail at Comfort. Shortly afterward, damaging winds knocked down numerous large tree limbs in Boerne.
April 2017	Hail	Comfort	-	no account filed
March 2006	Hail	Comfort	-	no account filed
April 2006	Hail	Comfort	-	no account filed
April 2005	Hail	Comfort	-	no account filed
May 2002	Hail	Comfort	-	no account filed
April 1996	Hail	Comfort	-	no account filed
April 1996	Hail	Comfort	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Kendall County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

5 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Comfort Historic District (Boundary Increase)	0.1 miles	2004
Comfort Historic District	0.1 miles	1979
Treue Der Union Monument	0.3 miles	1978
Hygieostatic Bat Roost	1.4 miles	1983
Gazebo for Alber Steves	1.6 miles	2004

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 77001457 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Kendall County	All 12 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.