Name: Lacoste, Texas
Address: Lacoste, TX

LaCoste, TX RoadyGoat

In 2000, La Coste was the place in the United States with the highest percentage of its population reporting Alsatian ancestry, with 7.1% of the population reporting Alsatian ancestry. This unique cultural heritage sets La Coste apart from other towns in Texas and the United States.

Lacoste, TX RoadyGoat

In 2000, La Coste was the place in the United States with the highest percentage of its population reporting Alsatian ancestry, with 7.1% of the population reporting Alsatian ancestry. This unique heritage sets La Coste apart from other towns in Texas and the United States.

Alsatian Echoes from Castroville RoadyGoat

While nearby Castroville is famous as the 'Little Alsace of Texas,' LaCoste is a chapter in that same story. It started as a settlement called Fernando — twenty-five residents, two general stores, two saloons, and a daily stage to Castroville by 1896. Then in May of 1898 the post office was renamed LaCoste, not for anybody who lived here but for Jean B. LaCoste, a prominent San Antonio businessman and a native of France. What the place offered was something growing scarce five miles up the road in Castroville: new, affordable farmland right on a railroad. Second- and third-generation Alsatian-American families moved down to take it. You can still see the legacy in the family names on local mailboxes — Haby, Keller, Lutz, Biediger. By 1936 half of the town's four hundred people claimed Alsatian ancestry and a quarter were Hispanic, and the Southern Pacific main line was carrying out their cotton, corn, oats, pecans, and honey. Our Lady of Grace, built in 1912, still stands with its Corinthian columns and stained glass.

RoadyGoat →

Medina County

1844

Medina County is immediately west of Bexar County in southwest Texas. Hondo, the county seat, is located near the geographic center of the county at 29°17' north latitude and 99°02' west longitude, 100 miles from the Mexican border at Eagle Pass. The Medina River, from which the county derives its name, traverses the northeastern portion of the county. The western part is drained by the Frio River. Medina County covers 1,331 square miles with elevations ranging from 1,995 feet in the northern Hill Country to as low as 635 feet in the southern region. The county is divided from east to west by the Balcones Escarpment , which separates the Edwards Plateau and Hill Country to the north from the Rio Grande Plains to the south. The climate is subtropical and subhumid; the summers are hot and dry. Annual rainfall averages 28.43 inches; average relative humidity is 81 percent at 6 A.M. and 49 percent at 6 P.M. The temperature averages a low of 42° F in the winter and a high of 96° in the summer. The annual growing season is 263 days. The northern Hill Country region has black waxy and limestone soils that support grasses, brush, junipers, mesquite, shinnery oaks, and live oaks. The larger southern region has sandy loam and clay soils that support bluestem, buffalo, and Arizona cottontop grasses, as well as post oak, live oak, and mesquite . Cypress and pecan trees are commonly found on the banks of rivers and creeks. Approximately 45 percent of the land in the county is considered prime farmland. Medina Lake Reservoir, completed in 1913 in the northeastern part of the county, furnishes impounded Medina River water for an extensive irrigation system throughout the eastern half of the county. Other man-made surface reservoirs have been built on Chacon, Parkers, Squirrel, Live Oak, and Elm creeks. Ranchers keep local stock tanks for water. Most subsurface or ground waters in Medina County are artesian; two major subsurface water belts are the Edwards Aquifer and the Carrizo Sand Aquifer. The county can be divided from north to south into three geological sections, the Lower Cretaceous of the Edwards Plateau, Lampasas Cut Plain, and the Comanche Plateau; the Upper Cretaceous of the Blackland Belt; and the older Tertiary of the Gulf Coast Plain. Mineral resources within the county include oil, gas, clay, sand, and gravel. High-quality clays for the production of bricks and tile are found in the D'Hanis area of western Medina County. Limestone, readily available and of good quality, is used extensively for buildings and hand-carved tombstones. Crushed limestone, flintstone, igneous pebbles, caliche, and clay are found in the county and are used widely as road materials. Bat guano is commercially mined in the limestone hills north of Hondo and marketed as a high-quality natural fertilizer. The guano mined at Ney's Cave, claimed to be one of the largest bat habitats in the world, was used in the manufacture of gun powder during the Civil War . Medina County is in an area that has been the site of human habitation for many thousands of years. Evidence of early man has been discovered at a site known as Scorpion Cave on the Medina River in the northeastern part of the county. Archeologists believe that ancestors of either Coahuiltecan or Tonkawa Indians occupied this cave continuously for several thousand years before the arrival of the first Europeans. The first Spaniard to set foot in the region was probably Alonso De León , governor of Coahuila, who passed through the area in 1689 en route to East Texas , and named the Medina River and Hondo and Seco creeks. Two years later Domingo Terán de los Ríos , the first provincial governor of Texas, tracked across southern Medina County, laying the foundation for El Camino Real (Old San Antonio Road ). The Upper Presidio Road, as the Camino Real was known in 1807, purposely skirted the Indian strongholds of the Hill Country beyond the Balcones Escarpment. Throughout the 1700s the are

Tsha Handbook → · 4.3 mi away

Medina River

1689

The Medina River rises in north and west prongs that originate in springs in the Edwards Plateau divide of northwest Bandera County and converge near Medina (at 29°48' N, 99°15' W). The river then flows southeast for 116 miles to its mouth, on the San Antonio River in south Bexar County (at 29°14' N, 98°24' W). The first European to see the river was Alonso De León , governor of Coahuila, who led his expedition across Texas in 1689 in pursuit of the French. De León noted in his diary that he named the stream for Pedro Medina, the early Spanish engineer whose navigation tables he was using in mapping his route through the wilderness with an astrolabe. On other old maps the river is designated variously as Río Mariano, Río San José, or Río de Bagres-Catfish River. For a time it was considered the official boundary between Texas and Coahuila and shown as running to the Gulf of Mexico, with the San Antonio River labeled as a tributary. Later the designations were reversed, and, along with Cibolo Creek, the Medina has been regarded as a tributary of the San Antonio. On August 18, 1813, bearers of the green flag of the Republican Army of the North , fighting to uphold the declared independence of Mexico from Spain, met defeat in the battle of Medina at the river southeast of San Antonio de Béxar. Hundreds of rebel troops were killed by forces under Spanish general Joaquín de Arredondo . At the same site on March 2, 1836, Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna paused in his march from the Rio Grande in order to gather forces for the final approach to Bexar and the engagement with Texans in the Alamo . Diarist José Enrique de la Peña mentions resting at the river, the making of plans, and carrying out such tasks as assigning horses to dragoons. In the midst of the excitement over impending battle, Peña still took note of "the little stream whose banks were rich with pecan trees." A decade later, the same stream, with its gallery of pecan and cypress, caught the attention of European empresario Henri Castro as he negotiated contracts to bring colonists to the new Republic of Texas . Castro chose a site at a bend of the river to lay out a town to serve outlying farms of immigrants from Alsace and nearby German states. The first band of colonists, though beset with many difficulties, arrived in 1844 to begin building Castroville. Efforts on the part of Castro and his principal partner, A. F. Louis Huth , continued for some years to recruit additional groups and individuals to the Medina valley. With success made difficult by the alternation of drought and flood typical of the Balcones Fault zone of Texas, Castro is reportedly the first to have envisioned a dam on the box canyon of the river to impound floodwater for irrigation of the fertile fields below. Near the site of the later Medina Dam, an earthen dam was built in 1850, which was soon replaced by a stone structure providing power for a downriver mill. From San Antonio and the outpost of Castroville, enterprising small bands of shingle makers and charcoal burners began working their way up the river, taking advantage of abundant timber and the protection from Indian danger provided by the Texas Rangers . There were several families camping on the river in the late 1840s at the horseshoe bend later chosen as the townsite of Bandera. Arriving in 1854 was a band of Mormons who had traveled to Texas after breaking away from the Utah-bound main group. They settled at Fredericksburg before moving on to the Medina; the group moved again from Bandera and finally established itself downriver at Mountain Valley. Till the death of leader Lyman Wight , the group remained intact and engaged in the manufacture of lumber and furniture. In 1852 John James , Charles Demontel , and John Herndon formed a partnership for the purpose of building a cypress-lumber mill and laying out a town "on the Medina above Castroville." Their plan, implemented the following year, involved a site at the dee

Tsha Handbook → · 4.3 mi away

City Hotel

1912

Built in 1912 by Alsatian immigrant and prominent local developer Emil Schmidt, the City Hotel offered public lodging previously unavailable to visitors to La Coste. Its proximity to the railroad depot made it an ideal location to offer food and lodging to the growing number of visitors and business people involved in sales, expansion of the railroad, and the building of a dam in northeastern Medina County. The elegantly furnished rooms, verandas, and restaurant and ready clientele combined to make the hotel and restaurant an immediate success. Gus and Maggie (Ma) Keller bought the property in 1928 during the National prohibition against the sale of alcoholic beverages. They nevertheless ran a saloon in the hotel known as "Kellers Place" which according to local tradition allowed patrons to gamble and drink in a back room, an activity which because of timely telephone calls avoided police detection. Maggie, who managed the saloon for almost four decades, became the subject of local legend. One of the saloon's most prominent features was the large number of bottle caps which covered its walls and ceiling. The hotel is a local landmark recognized by generations of people traveling through or visiting La Coste. 1994

Historical Marker →

Site of Idlewild Community

1867

This farming community was a growing settlement in July of 1867 when a group of Indians on horseback attacked Romanus Gross, age 51, and his 19-year-old son George on land belonging to the elder Gross' son-in-law, Michael Kauffmann. A party of men from Castroville was in pursuit of the Indians, who had been accused of stealing horses. Both Grosses were shot in the side; George was scalped. The community was formally organized in about 1879, the same year that Thomas Dunkin, a lawyer, arrived from New York. Dunkin lived and worked as a tutor in the home of Michael Kauffmann and his family. Seeing the growth of the community, Dunkin and Kauffmann convinced their neighbors of the need for a schoolhouse. Kauffmann provided the land and Dunkin became their first teacher. He taught an innovative curriculum designed in New York for one-room schools. Dunkin welcomed the railroad in 1881 by offering twenty acres of his own land for a station and townsite, but other necessary land could not be secured and the station was erected on a site that became Lacoste. Competition between the communities was high, and Idlewild remained an agricultural and livestock center. In 1887, Dunkin applied for a U. S. postal permit. He first chose the name Ida, for Michael Kauffmann's daughter, and then tried Ivanhoe, but both names were rejected by the postal service because they were already in use in other Texas locations. He finally named the community Idlewild after Idlewild, New York. The post office remained in service until 1902. Idlewild's second school closed in 1955. (1999)

Historical Marker →

Castroville, TX

1842

Castroville, the "little Alsace" of Texas, is located on the Medina River and U.S. Highway 90 twenty-five miles west of San Antonio in eastern Medina County. The town was named for its founder, Henri Castro , with whom the Republic of Texas negotiated an empresario contract on January 15, 1842. Castro's grant began four miles west of the Medina River and comprised frontier lands in Comanche territory. Wanting to locate his first settlement on the Medina River, Castro purchased the sixteen leagues between his grant and the river from John McMullen of San Antonio. He arranged transport for mostly Catholic Alsatian farmers to the Texas coast, from where the colonists were escorted overland to San Antonio. On September 2, 1844, Castro set out from San Antonio with his colonists, accompanied by Texas Ranger John C. Hays and five of his rangers, to decide upon a site for settlement. The company chose a level, park-like area near a sharp bend of the Medina River covered with pecan trees. Castro recounts in his memoirs that after crossing the river members of his party killed two deer, three bears, and one alligator and caught numerous fish. Subsequently, the colonists endured raids by Comanches and Mexicans, droughts in 1848 and 1849, an invasion of locusts, and a cholera epidemic in 1849. Castro patterned his town after European villages in which small town lots were surrounded by individual farming plots. The town was surveyed by John James; its streets were named in honor of Castro's relatives and friends and the capitals of Europe. In 1844 citizens of Castroville built St. Louis Catholic Church, the first church in Medina County. Zion Lutheran Church was built in 1853; the first public school classes taught in Medina County were held in this church in 1854. By 1856 Castroville supported three large stores, a brewery, and a water-powered gristmill. The community raised corn, cattle, horses, hogs, and poultry, and sold produce to the military posts in the area. Castroville architecture and style were distinctly European. A cross was erected on Mount Gentilz ( see GENTILZ, J. L. T. ). A visitor in the 1850s described Castroville as quite "un-Texan," with its "steep thatched roofs and narrow lanes" and the inn whose interior suggested "Europe rather than the frontier." The houses were not arranged along parallel lines but were spread out over many acres. Stores and residences were constructed without the broad front porches common to the South. The house builders used rough-cut stone or stone and timber combinations and smoothed over the exterior with lime plaster. The European method of building ground floors of stone and second floors with vertically placed timbers was characteristic of two-story construction. Many of the structures erected in Castroville's earliest days continued to house people and businesses 150 years later. Local builders made use of large cypress trees growing along the Medina River to produce shingles for home use or for market. ( see GERMAN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE .) The first post office in Medina County opened in Castroville in 1847 with M. Laroch as postmaster. In 1848 the Texas legislature established Medina County and designated Castroville its county seat. In 1853 Castro donated two lots for the site of the new courthouse, which when completed in 1855 served as a school. A rock dam, still intact in 1945, was built in 1854 to furnish power for a gristmill. During the Civil War wagon trains loaded with freight stopped overnight at Castroville on their way to Mexico, and the town thrived. By the mid-1860s Castroville was the twelfth largest city in Texas. In 1884 the town had a population of 1,000, a weekly newspaper called the Brackett Weekly News , a steam gristmill and cotton gin, a brewery, Catholic and Lutheran churches, a convent, and a public school. The principal marketable goods produced at this time were cotton, hides, and grain. By 1890 pecans were being marketed, the Castroville Anvil was bein

Tsha Handbook → · 4.3 mi away

Ihnken Family Cemetery

1846

Early Castroville colonist and Dutch immigrant Marie Becker Ihnken was buried just north of this site in 1847 by her son, Gerhard. The German-born Gerhard married Marie Jeanne Pichot on October 22, 1846. The Pichot family arrived on the first of Henri Castro's ships. Though they originally intended to return to France, the Pichot family remained in Texas after Marie Jeanne's father, Jean Nicolas, died of complications after a rattlesnake bite. Major civic leaders in early Castroville, the Ihnkens were farmers who raised cattle and owned and operated a sawmill, a store, and a fruit orchard on their vast lands. Particularly remembered for his agricultural contributions, Gerhard is said to have brought the first reaper and the first binder to the Castroville area. One of the oldest cemeteries in Medina County, the Ihnken family plot contains eight family members in marked graves; several others are unknown. Marie Becker Ihnken is one of the few older Castro colonists whose grave is still marked. A Freedman employed by Gerhard Ihnken is said to be buried in the cemetery. To avoid disturbing unmarked graves, the cemetery has been inactive since 1950. (1997)

Historical Marker → · 4.9 mi away

Lacoste, Texas

Music in Lacoste

Songs About Lacoste

Artists From Lacoste

Rivers & Roads in Song near Lacoste

History of Lacoste

LaCoste, TX RoadyGoat

Lacoste, TX RoadyGoat

Alsatian Echoes from Castroville RoadyGoat

Medina County

Medina River

City Hotel

Site of Idlewild Community

Castroville, TX

Ihnken Family Cemetery

Things to Do in Lacoste

Everything Near Lacoste