Name: Hondo, Texas
Address: Hondo, TX

The Night They Robbed Both Banks at Once RoadyGoat

Downtown Hondo earned a small footnote in outlaw history during the Roaring Twenties. The Newton Boys, four brothers out of the Uvalde country who became the most successful bank-and-train robbers in American history, knocked over banks across South Texas during a run from late 1921 through the fall of 1922, hitting San Antonio, San Marcos, New Braunfels, Boerne, Pearsall, and right here in Hondo. What set the Hondo job apart is that the gang cleaned out two banks in town in a single night, a feat they didn't pull off in most places. The Newtons prided themselves on being careful professionals; their boast was that they never killed anyone in a robbery, preferring to crack safes in the dark and ride out before the town woke up. Over their career the brothers and their crew took down more than 80 banks and six trains from Texas into Canada, walking away with a fortune. For one night in 1922, two of those banks stood on the streets of little Hondo. (Source: Handbook of Texas, Newton Boys.)

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This Is God's Country, Please Don't Drive Through It Like Hell RoadyGoat

If you slow down rolling into town, the sign on the city limits is doing exactly its job. In 1930 the Hondo Lions Club put up a roadside sign that read, This is God's Country, Don't Drive Thru It Like Hell, a blunt plea aimed at travelers barreling through on the highway too fast. It worked as advertising better than anyone expected. The sign got photographed, printed on postcards, quoted by tourists across the country, and it grew into Hondo's unofficial motto. By the 1940s some townsfolk thought the wording was a touch rough, so the message was softened: thru became through, and a polite please was tucked in front, giving the line you can still read today, This is God's Country, Please Don't Drive Through It Like Hell. The slogan has turned up in travel magazines and even surfaced in the music video for Little Texas's song God Blessed Texas. It is a small-town speed-limit gimmick that accidentally became one of the most famous welcome signs in the state. (Source: Texas Hill Country; Barry Popik etymology research.)

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Hondo, TX RoadyGoat

Hondo’s got a certain charm, a feeling you get driving in under those live oaks, knowing you’re somewhere special. It’s more than just the elevation giving you a good view of the plains stretching out around us. It’s knowing the land has always been the lifeblood here. You see it in the fields, the ranches, the way folks still depend on the seasons. The Southern Pacific coming through in '81 definitely changed things, spurred growth like you wouldn’t believe, even if the town was officially established a couple years later. But the land, that's the constant. And you know, for a town this size, we’ve had our share of folks who’ve gone on to do big things.

Pearson, Frederick Stark

1911

Frederick Stark Pearson, civil engineer, son of Ambrose and Hannah (Edgerly) Pearson, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on July 3, 1861. He graduated from Tufts College in 1883 and received a master's degree in 1884. Later he was awarded honorary doctor of science and doctor of laws degrees (in 1900 and 1905). He was instructor in mathematics and applied mechanics at Tufts from 1883 to 1886. Pearson developed the electric transportation system in Boston and in 1894 became chief engineer of Metropolitan Street Railways in New York City; he served as consulting engineer for other street railway systems in Canada, the United States, Cuba, Spain, and England. He developed electric power systems for São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Mexico City, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1911 he was chief engineer of the building of the Medina Dam on the Medina River in Texas and established an irrigation district of more than 35,000 acres in Bexar, Medina, and Atascosa counties. In 1912 he organized a syndicate in Hale County near Plainview for drilling irrigation wells to irrigate about 60,000 acres. This acreage was to be divided into farming tracts with improvements, which included about eighty-five deep wells. Most of Pearson's financial backing came from British capital, and his Texas projects suffered setbacks when World War I broke out. In an effort to improve his financial condition, he and his wife took passage to England on the SS Lusitania . They died when the ship was sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915. Dr. Pearson had married Mabel Ward on January 7, 1887. They were the parents of two sons and one daughter. The town of Pearson, named for Fred Pearson, was established in 1912 by the Medina Valley Irrigation Company as a stop on the Southern Pacific Railroad between LaCoste and Noonan Switch in Medina County. It was the site of a shop, a machinery and materials yard, and a house for a caretaker. The proposed townsite was never developed.

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Hondo Anvil Herald

1886

The Hondo Anvil Herald , a weekly newspaper serving Medina County since 1886, owes its origins to a nineteenth-century county seat dispute that divided the Southwest Texas towns of Castroville and Hondo City and to a man who later bought the principal papers from each town and put them together. The Castroville Anvil was established in July 1886, not long after Castroville defeated a move to make Hondo the county seat. Castroville supporters staged a large celebration of their hard-won victory. One of the features of the event was the firing of anvils, a process by which anvils are blown into the air by charges of gunpowder. The loud, cannon-like reports set the nearby hills ringing with echoes. The newspaper was named Anvil to suggest a metaphorical parallel. Two previous papers had operated in Castroville, the Era (1876–79) and the Quill (1879–82). With total capital of $2,500 the Castroville Printing and Publishing Company formed on May 24, 1886. Circulation was more than 500 within a year and 750 by 1888. W. B. Stephens, the first Anvil editor and printer, was succeeded after two years by P. J. Stephenson. In 1889 the paper was sold to the state Farmers' Alliance , which sought $5,000 in stock from members. John G. Hall served as editor. In 1892 Castroville lost to Hondo City in another county seat election. In 1891 Herman E. Haass, who as a boy had worked as an Era printer's devil, became the Anvil 's editor and business manager. He bought out the paper in 1893 but sold his interest in 1894, when he was elected county judge. Hall returned as editor and major owner, though the Anvil Printing Company was held by Haass's father, Valentin, a native of Bavaria. J. O. Holzhaus replaced Hall as editor in 1898. In 1900 Valentin Haass sold the Anvil for $275 to twenty-six-year-old Fletcher Davis of Marshall County, Mississippi, a partner of another of Haass's sons, Henry. In August that year Davis married Roberta Octavia Hopp, who became lifelong assistant editor. The Hondo Herald , established in March 1891 by H. S. Kirby with editors Sam and Jeff Jones, was Hondo's third paper. It was preceded by the short-lived Medina County News (1882–88) and the Hondo City Quill (1890). Louis J. Brucks became editor in 1893, left in 1895, and returned in 1897. Herald circulation was 470 by 1894 and 520 by 1896. Brucks, who became sole owner by 1897, later served as county and district attorney. The Herald 's only competition was the short-lived Hondo News (1900). Davis bought the Hondo Herald and consolidated it with the Anvil and named the paper the Hondo Anvil Herald . The first edition appeared on October 17, 1903. In July 1911 Texas citizens voted narrowly against a statewide constitutional amendment for prohibition . Beginning the previous September, in 1910, Davis's antiprohibitionist Anvil Herald saw local competition from a new weekly, the Hondo Times , edited by W. R. and J. H. Hardy. The new paper, financed by local prohibition supporters, took a strong dry stance and pushed for the amendment. The two papers warred through their editorial pages for eleven months. Shortly after the election vindicated Davis in majorities both statewide and in Medina County, the Hardys sold the Times to Edward J. Brucks. By 1914 Davis had bought out the Times and also acquired the Star in nearby D'Hanis. In addition to newspapers, Davis's office also handled job printing. In the 1930s and up to the mid-1940s Davis's daughter, Anne, ran the paper as managing editor. In 1946 the Davises sold the Anvil Herald to William E. Berger, an Illinois native who had worked for the Gonzales Daily Inquirer . Berger bought the Anvil Herald with backing from his Gonzales employers but like Davis soon became sole owner. Anvil Herald circulation, about 1,800 when the paper changed hands in 1946, grew to 3,600 by the late 1980s. In 1986 the paper celebrated its 100th anniversary with a ninety-four-page commemorative edition.

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Hondo Army Airfield

1942

Hondo Army Airfield is in northwest Hondo off U.S. Highway 90 in Medina County. In early 1942 Hondo applied for a United States Army Air Force pilot-training facility. Citizens acquired guarantees of 400 housing units in less than two days. Authorization for construction of the navigation school arrived from Washington in March 1942. The Henry B. Zachry Company of San Antonio used 3,000 employees to construct more than 600 buildings, numerous streets, a utility network, and an airdrome with runways, taxiways, and aprons, in eighty-nine days and at a cost of nearly $7.25 million. A 330-unit housing project known as Navigation Village sprang up on fifty-two acres at the southeastern corner of the 3,675-acre base. The air field, commanded by Col. G. B. Dany, began operations on July 4, 1942, began student training on August 10, 1942, and graduated its first class of navigators on November 26 of that year. By that time more than 5,300 military personnel were stationed at the base. The aircraft included B-34s, B-18s, AT-7s, and AT-11s. The school was the largest United States Air Force navigation School in the world at the time. The Women's Air Force Service Pilots were assigned there in November 1943. Two notable woman pilots, Betty Heinrich and Hollywood stunt actress Mary Wiggins, were among the first WASPs to report for duty. Between July 1942 and August 1945 some 14,158 navigators were trained at Hondo. The base was closed on December 29, 1945, and the buildings and fixtures were sold as surplus. By 1950 the population of Hondo had dropped from its high of 12,000 in 1942 to 4,220. Between 1945 and 1951 civilian operators such as the Hollaway flying school trained student pilots at the former base under the GI Bill. The base was reactivated at the outset of the Korean War in 1951 with independent contractor Texas Aviation Industries, directed by H. B. Zachry, training pilots in T-6s, T-28s, and T-34s, in a joint effort with the United States Air Force. This arrangement ended when the base was closed again on June 30, 1958. During the 1960s the city of Hondo leased facilities at the base to the Hondo Livestock Auction and to Gary Aerospace, Universal Rundle, and Doss Aviation. The aviation companies worked with the United States Air Force to screen pilots, and Universal Rundle manufactured toilets. Sometime in the 1960s a golf course was constructed on the base through the efforts of base commander Lt. Col. Earl V. Riley. A golf tournament bearing his name remained a yearly event in the 1980s. In the spring of 1973 the Air Force began a flight-screening program at Hondo using the T-41 Mescalero, a militarized version of the civilian Cessna 172. The training program, still in operation in the 1980s, was attended by United States and foreign students. After the mid-1970s the base housed a number of businesses, including a fiberglass-products plant, a greenhouse, a national guard armory, and the Medina Electric Cooperative.

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Mission Valley

1865

Following Texas Emancipation in 1865, many freed slaves remained in this area on their former masters' farms. By 1869 blacks had organized a church and a school on the north bank of Hondo Creek (about 2 mi. N). Beginning in 1876, landowner L.L. White (d. 1889) sold small farm plats on the north and south banks of Hondo Creek exclusively to blacks. White, an abolitionist before the Civil War, was a native of Massachusetts and settler in Henri Castro's colony. The community on the south bank was named Mission Valley by Austin Grant, one of the first settlers. Residents on both banks of Hondo Creek established common facilities within walking distance of both settlements. Before 1881 their church building housed both Methodist and Baptist congregations and the school. Cottonwood Cemetery overlooks the creek, its oldest tombstone dates 1886. Emancipation Oak was the site of Emancipation Day pilgrimages on June 19. Many of the settlers and the Methodist church moved to the new railroad town of Hondo (2 mi. SW) after 1881. The Baptist church moved to Hondo in 1904. Descendants of the first settlers lived at Mission Valley until 1942, when a U.S. Army air field was built here. The site was made a Hondo city park after 1948. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.

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Hondo

1840

Spanish explorers passed this way several times in the centuries preceding Anglo settlement of the area. The original village that would become Hondo was situated on "El Arroyo Hondo," named by the Spanish. Permanent settlers to the area began arriving with Henri Castro in the 1840s. The Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio (GH&SA) Railroad began to consider the busy village on Hondo Creek for the location of a depot in the late 19th century. They ultimately chose 188 acres five miles west of the town. The first deeds were executed in 1881. A post office for Hondo City was approved in 1882. Knowing that the county seat might be moved from Castroville to a more central location, the GH&SA donated land for a courthouse in 1883. The county seat was relocated to Hondo City in 1892. In the early 20th century the town, by then known simply as Hondo, developed as a trade center and cotton shipping point. Oil was discovered in the area in the 1920s. The population grew steadily with commerce; by 1940 it reached 2,500. The town's population exploded in 1942 when an Army Air Corps base was built to the northwest. Hondo was incorporated that year and the federal government provided educational funds and installed a sewage system to accommodate the boom. At its peak Hondo had an estimated population of 12,000. The base was closed in 1946, but continued to operate as a civilian pilot training center through the 1950s. Hondo grew steadily in the late 20th century. Its population in 1998 was more than 8,000. The community continues to thrive. (1999) Incise on base: Dr. John and Mrs. Gail Meyer, J. A. Guedea Rios

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Fohn-Bless Store

1878

Store-residence built in D'Hanis about 1878 by John Fohn (1839-91), a native of Prussia. In addition to a general mercantile store, the structure was also the site of D'Hanis elections and a Justice of the Peace Court. In 1897, Rolf Frerichs (1833-1913) purchased the building from the Fohn Estate and moved it to this location. Frerichs' son-in-law, C.J. Bless (1864-1944), operated a store here until 1939. Medina Electric Cooperative occupied the building until 1963. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1974.

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Hondo, Texas

Music in Hondo

Songs About Hondo

Artists From Hondo

Rivers & Roads in Song near Hondo

History of Hondo

The Night They Robbed Both Banks at Once RoadyGoat

This Is God's Country, Please Don't Drive Through It Like Hell RoadyGoat

Hondo, TX RoadyGoat

Pearson, Frederick Stark

Hondo Anvil Herald

Hondo Army Airfield

Mission Valley

Hondo

Fohn-Bless Store

Things to Do in Hondo

Everything Near Hondo