Near the neighboring towns of Boerne, Comfort, Sisterdale, and Waring; Welfare, Texas, is located four miles southeast of Waring, Texas on Waring-Welfare Road in Kendall County in the beautiful Texas Hill Country. Want to visit Welfare? You may not see much because Welfare over the years, has become a Texas ghost town. How did this tiny town become a ghost town?
First settled in the 1800s, this tiny town was first named Bon Ton which is French for high toned. After discovering that another city had that name, the German-American people of this town changed the name to Wohlfarht, meaning pleasant trip. Over the years the town was finally named Welfare.
In the 1890s, this tiny town flourished to the population of 275 settlers due to the building of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway which allowed produced goods to be transported to other nearby Texas cities. A school house was built, a saloon, a hotel, a cotton gin, a post office, and a general store. However, in the early 1900s, due to severe weather conditions (drought and fire) and an infestation of bolls weevils, the population of Welfare, Texas began to decline and the railroad traffic began to slow down. After the drought and fires (the fire wiping out the post office, which was rebuilt a year later) the Great Depression came along adding to Welfare’s problems. Just as if Welfare did not have enough problems, in 1930 State Highway 87 was built bypassing the tiny town.
