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Crystal City, Texas

Everything Crystal City is known for

RoadyGoat plays music like this when you drive through Crystal City. It's free on iPhone, and full songs play through Apple Music.

Music in Crystal City

Songs About Crystal City

Mockingbird
Max Stalling
52%
"Well, I should be in Crystal City"
"Even hit up Dilley and Crystal City"
Crucified Son
Charley Crockett
6%
"Those Crystal City lights"

Artists From Crystal City

Rivers & Roads in Song near Crystal City

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Crystal City.

History of Crystal City

Crystal City, TX RoadyGoat

Crystal City sits in the heart of the Winter Garden Region of Texas, and its story is deeply intertwined with the land. Early on, it was primarily a ranching area, vast and open, sparsely populated. The arrival of the railroad changed everything. Suddenly, this isolated corner of the state was connected to markets, and that's when the potential of the fertile soil really began to be realized. The name, Crystal City, supposedly came from the artesian wells that provided unusually pure water, crucial for the burgeoning agriculture. The city became a major producer of spinach, earning it the nickname "Spinach Capital of the World," a title celebrated with the iconic Popeye statue that still stands proudly in front of City Hall. But Crystal City's history isn't just about agricultural success. During World War II, the town became the site of a controversial internment camp, holding Japanese, German, and Italian civilians and their families. This dark chapter serves as a stark reminder of the complexities of the past and the importance of remembering even the uncomfortable truths. Even now, driving through the streets, you feel the echoes of these different eras, a blend of agricultural heritage, wartime memories, and the resilience of a community that has weathered both prosperity and hardship.

Crystal City, TX RoadyGoat

Crystal City, Texas, is known as the "Spinach Capital of the World," a title earned through hard work and a bit of luck. This small town in Zavala County sits in the heart of the Winter Garden Region of Texas, where the climate and fertile soil create ideal conditions for growing leafy greens, especially spinach. The industry really took off in the early 20th century, with irrigation projects that tapped into the underground water sources, turning the semi-arid landscape into a productive agricultural zone. The annual Spinach Festival is a big deal here, a celebration of the crop that put Crystal City on the map. You'll see everything spinach-related, from cooking contests featuring spinach dishes to the crowning of the Spinach Queen. There's even a statue of Popeye the Sailor Man, erected in the 1930s as a thank you to the cartoon character for popularizing spinach and boosting its consumption nationwide. While other crops are grown here now, spinach remains a symbol of Crystal City's resilience and agricultural heritage.

Crystal City, TX RoadyGoat

Crystal City, out there in the Winter Garden Region, tells a story etched in Tejano resilience. The land itself, flat and fertile south of San Antonio, drew Mexican families up from the borderlands and across from Mexico starting around the turn of the century. They came to work the spinach fields, their hands calloused but their hopes high. Spanish was the language of the streets, of the mercados, of the Catholic church, and it echoed in the cantinas long after English became the language of business and government. The old ways held on, even as the political winds shifted. The quinceañeras were lavish, the Día de los Muertos celebrations were vibrant, and the smell of tamales and menudo wafted from homes during the holidays. Even now, driving down streets named after Mexican heroes and revolutionary figures, you catch glimpses of that heritage. Murals depicting farmworkers and scenes from Mexican history adorn buildings, a constant reminder of the people who built this town. The lowrider culture is strong, a visual expression of Chicano pride cruising down Main Street. Though time and assimilation have inevitably changed things, the spirit of Crystal City remains deeply rooted in its Mexican American identity.

Crystal City - Spinach Capital & Chicano Movement

1963

Crystal City, the 'Spinach Capital of the World,' was the birthplace of the Chicano political movement in Texas when Mexican American citizens won control of the city council in 1963.

Andrade, Erasmo Wilivaldo

1966

Erasmo Wilivaldo Andrade, Mexican American educator and activist, son of Wilivaldo and María (Nieto) Andrade, was born on May 12, 1931, at his family’s ranch near Bruni, Texas. His siblings included José, Lupe, María, Paula, Eva, Oralia, Velia, Alicia, and Helen. He married Sally Virginia Jones of Fort Stockton, Texas, in 1971. This couple had two children, Marisa and Carlos Andrade. Erasmo Andrade grew up in San Antonio and graduated from San Antonio Vocational and Technical School (now Fox Technical High School) in 1949. As a young man he competed in long-distance track and amateur boxing. In 1950 Andrade joined the U.S. Navy and served as a machinist’s mate during the Korean War from 1951 to 1953. After an honorable discharge, he attended St. Mary's University in San Antonio, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in international relations in 1957. He entered the San Antonio school district as a teacher at Cooper Middle School in 1958 and continued work towards a master’s in education at North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas). Andrade subsequently earned a Juris Doctor from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in 1977. Early in his career, Andrade also taught English as a second language (ESL) at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. His ESL teaching expanded as a civilian advisor to the Turkish Air War College and the Imperial Navy of Iran, where he taught for the U.S. Department of Defense for three years. Andrade’s activism began in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he started joining organizations representing groups throughout Central and South Texas, including the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the American G.I. Forum (AGIF), the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (PASSO), Texans for the Educational Advancement of Mexican Americans (TEAMA), and Involvement of Mexican Americans in Gainful Endeavors (IMAGE). In addition, he served as executive director of the Federation for the Advancement of Mexican Americans (FAMA) from 1967 to 1970 and participated in the “War on Poverty” movement as a leading member of St. Phillip’s Community Progress in Action and the United Council for Civic Action. As a staff member of the Bishops' Committee for the Spanish Speaking , one of his major achievements was the organization of the Valley Farm Workers Assistance Committee. As chairman of this committee, Andrade supported and helped coordinate the Rio Grande Valley farm workers in the 1966 Starr County Strike . He was able to direct several food caravans to assist the farmworkers as they marched from Rio Grande City to Austin. The United Farm Workers marched for safe work conditions and a state minimum wage of $1.25. Andrade also helped fight for voter rights in the Winter Garden Region as a founding officer of the United Free Voter Registration Council in 1966. Additionally, he became the first director of federal programs for the Crystal City Independent School District. This was a significant role because there had been ongoing conflict between Anglos and Mexican Americans in the 1960s over access to local government positions and school administration in Crystal City, where Mexican Americans constituted 85 percent of the population but lacked representation in local government or school administration ( see CRYSTAL CITY REVOLTS ). From 1971 to 1973 Andrade served as executive director of the newly-created Zavala County Mental Health Outreach Program. Under his leadership, this organization established a multi-service community center that delivered youth counseling, senior service, home service, and mental health service programs to the indigent population of the county. In 1972 Andrade co-founded the Zavala County Health Association, which acquired federal funds from the Office of Economic Opportunity to establish a full-service health clinic. While in Crystal City, he also served as a local spokesman for the Raza Unida Party (RUP) and co

Múzquiz, Virginia Aguirre

1963

Virginia Múzquiz, political activist and community organizer, was born in the South Texas town of Nordheim on December 13, 1925, to Anita Vega and Juan Aguirre. She participated in two successful efforts by Mexican Americans in Crystal City, Texas, to wrest control of local political offices from conservative Anglos. Múzquiz also ran for state office in 1964 and worked for the rights of women through Ciudadanos Unidos, a community-based organization from Crystal City. Estranged from her father at a young age, Múzquiz and her seven siblings were raised primarily by her mother, a migrant farm worker, and traveled with her mother following seasonal agricultural work throughout Texas when she was young. When she was old enough, she too became a farm laborer and traveled with her family to farms as far away as Virginia and Wyoming. Because of this, Múzquiz received only intermittent schooling and spoke little English until she was older. In 1943 Múzquiz married Encarnacion García and gave birth to a daughter, Luz Elena García, in 1944. At that time Virginia was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was quarantined at the State Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Sanatorium, Texas, near San Angelo. She contracted the disease as a child; however, her illness had gone undiagnosed due to her family’s limited access to healthcare, a common problem that faced many migrant farm workers. She and her husband divorced soon after, and she returned to her family in La Pryor, Texas. For the next five years Múzquiz was in and out of hospitals and had to have a lung surgically removed due to her condition. At the age of twenty-two years, she moved to Crystal City with her sisters to find work and soon married Jesús Múzquiz de la Garza, a successful local businessman. Twenty-five years her senior, her husband had been born to a prominent family in the town of Melchor Múzquiz in Coahuila, Mexico. He came to the United States in 1914 as a teenager to continue his formal education in San Antonio, Texas, and to escape the violence of the Mexican Revolution . Within a year of marriage, Virginia and Jesús had a daughter named Elda Lina. Another child died in infancy. After her pregnancy, she was once again interred for tuberculosis, this time in Mission, Texas. While there, with her husband’s encouragement, she learned English through the Hemphill Correspondence School. Virginia Múzquiz was well-known in Crystal City. In the segregated town, her husband owned the only hotel for Mexican guests, as well as a restaurant and regional coin-operated pianola business. She became a public notary, did bookkeeping for her husband, and attended a segregated Methodist church in town. She also served as a community translator for her friends and neighbors by advising them on official government, school, and business activities, and advocating on their behalf. Múzquiz’s political activity increased as Crystal City became a key center of political activism for Mexican civil rights during the early 1960s in Texas ( see CRYSTAL CITY REVOLTS ). In 1960 Tejanos and Mexican immigrants comprised 85 percent of Crystal City’s population; yet, Anglos dominated local government because various factors, including the poll tax, effectively disfranchised much of the local population. In 1963 the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (PASSO), a coalition of civil and worker rights groups, helped spearhead registration and voter drives and held rallies for Los Cinco Candidatos, a slate of five Mexican-American candidates to challenge the local Anglo political establishment. Múzquiz joined the local movement in 1963 first by attending rallies with her husband and daughter, then by speaking publicly on behalf of the candidates. She also worked as a poll watcher. The effort paid off. The slate of five won every seat. The following year, Múzquiz ran for state representative of the Sixty-seventh District of Dimmit, Zavala, Medina, and Uvalde counties, making her one of the first Latin

Crystal City Family Internment Camp, World War II

1941

When the U.S. entered the war in 1941, an immediate fear was the possibility of enemy agents in the country and the Western Hemisphere. As one response, thousands of Japanese-Americans were moved away from the West Coast. Lesser-known was an internment camp system operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The government built these camps to hold Japanese, German and Italian nationals arrested in the U.S. and Hawaii, and in Peru and other Latin American countries until they could be exchanged for American detainees. Three of these camps were in Texas at Kenedy, Seagoville and Crystal City. The Crystal City camp, converted from an existing migratory labor camp, was the largest internment facility in the U.S. and the only one built exclusively for families. The original 200-acre camp later expanded to almost 500 acres, with agricultural areas and support facilities. The primary living area was a 100-acre compound enclosed by a 10-foot barbed wire fence, complete with guard towers and spotlights. Like a small town, the compound had 700 buildings and included family housing, schools, a hospital, shops, warehouses, markets and recreation areas. Although intended for Japanese, the Crystal City camp also held Germans and a few Italians. The population averaged 2800 throughout the war. It reached a peak of almost 3400 in December 1944, two-thirds of whom were Japanese. At the end of the war, the government paroled internees throughout the U.S. or sent them to their home countries. The Crystal City camp was the only one still in operation by June 1946. It officially closed February 27, 1948, and the property transferred to the city and school district. Texas in World War II, V+60 (2005)

Espantosa Lake

1876

Most famous camping ground on Presidio Road. Earliest route between Texas and Coahuila. Many legends center about the lake. Here in 1876 Texas Rangers killed a band of desperadoes.

Historical Marker → · 4.5 mi away

Things to Do in Crystal City

Everything Near Crystal City

64 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Crystal City, TX

    Crystal City sits in the heart of the Winter Garden Region of Texas, and its story is deeply intertwined with the land. Early on, it was primarily a ranching area, vast and open, sparsely populated. The arrival of the…

  • Zavala County · 0.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Zavala County, a region explored as early as 1691 by Spanish Governor Domingo Teran de Los Rios. This land was later crossed by the historic San Antonio Road, used by explorers and settlers alike.…

  • The Walkout That Sparked a Revolution · 0.3 mi

    Imagine being a high school student told you can't speak Spanish at school, and that the cheerleading squad is capped so that almost no Mexican American student can make it. That was the reality here in 1969. On…

  • The Spinach Capital and its Sailor Man · 0.3 mi

    Right in the heart of Crystal City, you’ll find something you probably don’t expect: a brightly colored statue of Popeye the Sailor Man. It was placed there in 1937, making it one of the first statues in the world…

  • The Enemy Alien Camp in the Spinach Fields · 0.3 mi

    During World War II, one of the strangest chapters in Crystal City's history unfolded just on the edge of town. The U.S. government took over a former migrant labor camp and converted it into the Crystal City Family…

  • Los Cinco: The First Upset · 0.3 mi

    Long before the famous 1969 walkout, the first cracks in Crystal City's political dam appeared in 1963. At the time, no person of Mexican descent had ever served on the city council, despite making up the vast majority…

  • Engineering an Oasis · 0.3 mi

    As you look at the farm fields around Crystal City, you're seeing a landscape completely re-engineered by technology. The natural state of this land is semi-arid brush country. The secret to its transformation lies deep…

  • Crystal City: Named for Water, Famous for Spinach · 0.4 mi

    The name conjures up quartz, gemstones, maybe a mine full of glittering rock. But Crystal City has nothing to do with crystals. It was named for water, the clear, crystal-clean artesian water that bubbled up from the…

  • Crystal City - Spinach Capital & Chicano Movement · 0.4 mi · Historical Marker

    Crystal City, the 'Spinach Capital of the World,' was the birthplace of the Chicano political movement in Texas when Mexican American citizens won control of the city council in 1963.

  • Andrade, Erasmo Wilivaldo · 0.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Erasmo Wilivaldo Andrade, Mexican American educator and activist, son of Wilivaldo and María (Nieto) Andrade, was born on May 12, 1931, at his family’s ranch near Bruni, Texas. His siblings included José, Lupe, María,…

  • Múzquiz, Virginia Aguirre · 0.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Virginia Múzquiz, political activist and community organizer, was born in the South Texas town of Nordheim on December 13, 1925, to Anita Vega and Juan Aguirre. She participated in two successful efforts by Mexican…

  • Raza Unida Party · 0.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through South Texas, and right here in Crystal City, a political movement was born. In 1970, three hundred Mexican Americans gathered to form La Raza Unida Party. Their goal: to bring economic, social,…

Show all 64 nearby places
  • Crystal City, TX · 0.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Right here in Crystal City, you're driving through the former "Spinach Capital of the World." In 1937, this town embraced its title with a unique tribute: a statue of Popeye the Sailor Man, erected right across from…

  • Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations · 0.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    The Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations grew out of the Viva Kennedy-Viva Johnson clubs of the 1960 presidential campaign. The clubs were a result of increasing political activism that emerged among…

  • Spinach Culture · 0.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through South Texas, an area that became known as the Winter Garden. Right here, in Crystal City, is where spinach took root in a big way. Back in the winter of 1917, just four acres were planted as an…

  • San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad · 0.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through South Texas, and right here, you might be on the old San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad line. Chartered in 1909 as the Crystal City and Uvalde Railroad, it was known by its initials, SAU&G, but…

  • Zavala County · 0.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Zavala County, a place with a bit of a name problem! Established in 1846, this county was named for Lorenzo de Zavala, a key figure in Texas independence. But guess what? The Texas legislature…

  • Crystal City Internment Camp · 0.6 mi · Scraped Hmdb

    This unassuming spot holds a dark chapter in American history: the Crystal City Internment Camp, a family prison during World War II. During the war, the U.S. government, fearing disloyalty, incarcerated people of…

  • Crystal City Family Internment Camp, World War II · 0.6 mi · Historical Marker

    When the U.S. entered the war in 1941, an immediate fear was the possibility of enemy agents in the country and the Western Hemisphere. As one response, thousands of Japanese-Americans were moved away from the West…

  • Zavala County · 2.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Zavala County, a place with a past tied to the Civil War. During 1863 and 1864, this area was a crucial part of the Cotton Road, a lifeline for the Confederacy. Goods like guns, powder, and…

  • Espantosa Lake · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker

    Most famous camping ground on Presidio Road. Earliest route between Texas and Coahuila. Many legends center about the lake. Here in 1876 Texas Rangers killed a band of desperadoes.

  • Burleson Cemetery · 9.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Burleson Cemetery near Carrizo Springs. Between 1865 and 1870, the Burleson family settled this area. Tragically, four family members died in 1895: three likely from food poisoning and one from…

  • The Oil Boom That Changed Everything · 11.0 mi

    As you drive down U.S. Highway 83, notice the heavy truck traffic and the many oilfield service yards. You're on the main artery of the Eagle Ford Shale boom. Before 2010, this was a quiet road through ranch country.…

  • The Engineering of Water · 11.0 mi

    The reason Carrizo Springs could become the heart of the 'Winter Garden' agricultural region is a story of hydrology and engineering. The town sits atop the Carrizo Aquifer, a massive underground layer of water-soaked…

  • The Border Revolutionary · 11.0 mi

    In the early 1890s the Texas-Mexico border was a war zone, and the man at the center of it was Catarino Garza, a journalist and newspaper publisher who set out to overthrow Mexico's dictator, Porfirio Diaz. Garza worked…

  • Carrizo Springs, TX · 11.1 mi

    Carrizo Springs is home to the only olive orchard and oil press in Texas, marking a unique agricultural industry in the region.

  • Lemmons, Bob · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Dimmit County, and right here is the land of Bob Lemmons, a man who became a legend by living like the wild horses he captured. Born into slavery around 1847, Lemmons learned the ways of the range…

  • Bell, Peter Tumlinson · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Peter Tumlinson Bell, master texas fiddler, was born on February 26, 1869, near Gallinas Creek, in Atascosa County, Texas. He was the son of Marion “Mace” Bell and Sarah Jane (Tumlinson) Bell and was one of eleven…

  • English, Levi · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Dimmit County, the heart of Texas ranching country. Right here, Levi English was a true pioneer. Born in Arkansas in 1817, he lived for a time with the Comanche Indians before heading to Texas. He…

  • Mártires de Texas · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Dimmit County, near Carrizo Springs, where in 1913, a group called Los Mártires de Texas found themselves in a deadly shootout. These armed men were heading south, aiming to join Emiliano Zapata's…

  • Tumlinson, Peter · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through South Texas, perhaps near Carrizo Springs, where Peter Tumlinson spent his final years. He was a frontiersman, a soldier in the Texas Revolution, and a defender of the border. Arriving in Texas in…

  • Dimmit County · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Dimmit County, a place that was once part of the Wild Horse Desert, or El Desierto Muerto. This contested land strip between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River was a haven for desperate…

  • Emigrant Agent Acts · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through South Texas, and right here, in places like Carrizo Springs, lawmakers were trying to keep Mexican laborers from heading north. It's the 1920s, and big companies in Michigan and Ohio wanted cheap…

  • Carrizo Springs, TX · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Carrizo Springs, a town born from a simple discovery: water. Back in 1865, a group of fifteen families, led by Levi English, found these springs, naming them for the cane grass that grew nearby.…

  • Brown, Carrie Bertha Pfeiffer · 11.1 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through South Texas, perhaps near Carrizo Springs, where Carrie Pfeiffer Brown was born on August 8, 1886. Though her family soon moved to Encinal and then San Antonio, Carrie's early life here set the…

  • Dimmit County Courthouse · 11.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Dimmit County Courthouse in Carrizo Springs. Designed by architect Alfred Giles, the original courthouse was built in 1883 by J. C. Breeding & Sons, featuring a double gallery porch and…

  • First Baptist Church · 11.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the First Baptist Church of Carrizo Springs, a significant landmark in Texas Baptist history. This church, organized in 1878, was the very first built by Texas Baptists west of the Nueces…

  • Dimmit County · 11.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Dimmit County, a place named for Philip Dimmitt. He was a pioneer trader and a captain in the Texas Army, who died way back in 1841. The county itself was created in 1858, but it wasn't organized…

  • Carrizo Hill, TX · 12.4 mi

    Carrizo Hill is a diverse community with a rich ethnic heritage. As of the 2000 census, the racial makeup of the CDP was 82.30% White, 0.55% African American, 0.73% Native American, 0.36% Asian, 14.23% from other races,…

  • Mujeres Por La Raza · 13.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what was once Zavala County, the heartland of the Raza Unida Party. Right here, in 1973, Chicana activists formed Mujeres Por La Raza. Fed up with sexism within the party, they demanded real…

  • Yo-Lo-Digo Creek · 13.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Zavala County, and right nearby is Yo-Lo-Digo Creek. The name itself tells a story, supposedly. Legend has it, Mexicans walking single file heard a splash in the dark. One asked, 'Is it water?'…

  • Cometa, TX · 13.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Cometa is at the intersection of Farm roads 2691 and 393, ten miles west of Crystal City in far southwestern Zavala County. The Cometa area was the location of prehistoric Indian encampments and Spanish campsites; one…

  • Murlo, TX · 13.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Murlo, also referred to as The Murlo, Muela, and the Muela Settlement, was a frontier community on Muela Creek and the San Antonio-Eagle Pass Road, twenty-four miles southwest of Uvalde in northwestern Zavala County.…

  • Asphalt Belt Railway · 13.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Zavala County, and right here, the Asphalt Belt Railway once hauled valuable Texas rock asphalt. Chartered in 1923, this short line was built to connect mines in Zavala and Uvalde counties to the…

  • Quems Indians · 13.2 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through southwestern Zavala County, an area that was once home to the Quems Indians. Long before Texas was Texas, these native people ranged along the Rio Grande. In 1689, one Quems man, tattooed and…

  • Asherton, TX · 16.9 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Dimmit County, and right here is Asherton. This town owes its existence to Asher Richardson, a rancher with big dreams. Back in 1902, he bought this land from the state and envisioned a massive…

  • The Eagle Ford Boomtown · 17.1 mi

    The highway you’re on, State Highway 85, became the main artery for an incredible economic boom that transformed Big Wells in the 21st century. After decades as a quiet town, the development of the Eagle Ford Shale…

  • Tapping the Underground River · 17.1 mi

    The very existence of Big Wells is a story of hydrology and salesmanship. Beneath the town lies the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, a massive layer of water-saturated sandstone. Crucially, in this area the aquifer is…

  • The 'Winter Garden' Dream · 17.1 mi

    As you look out at the fields around Big Wells, imagine them filled not just with brush, but with rows of Bermuda onions. In the 1910s this town sat inside a nationally advertised farming region called the Winter…

  • Bel-Asher · 17.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Bel-Asher, a grand home built in 1910 for Asher Richardson, the man who developed this town. He even routed his Asherton and Gulf Railway right through here in 1905. The house, named for Asher and…

  • Big Wells, TX · 17.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Dimmit County, and right here is Big Wells. This town owes its very existence to a water source that was once a spectacle: artesian wells. The first one here supposedly jetted water over thirty…

  • Engineering a Garden in the Desert · 17.7 mi

    The transformation of Asherton from dry brushland into a fertile 'Winter Garden' was a feat of hydrological engineering. The key was the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, an underground reservoir holding water under immense…

  • The Railroad Built for Onions · 17.7 mi

    Every town needed a railroad, but Asher Richardson decided his town needed its own. In 1909, he chartered and built the Asherton and Gulf Railway, a 32-mile track connecting Asherton to a major rail line in Artesia…

  • The Grand Hotel in the Brush · 17.7 mi

    If you look around Asherton, the building that still carries the founder's name isn't a hotel — it's his house. They call it Bel-Asher, and Asher Richardson hired San Antonio architect Alfred Giles to design it,…

  • Asherton, TX · 17.7 mi

    U.S. Highway 83 is a significant transportation artery passing through Asherton. It leads northwest for 8 miles to Carrizo Springs, the county seat, and extends south for 72 miles all the way to Laredo. This highway…

  • Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: La Pryor (La Pryor) · 18.1 mi

    La Pryor (La Pryor, TX) placed on the 2A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Landon Jackson (2 HR).

  • Ramon Expedition · 18.3 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through South Texas, near the area of Dimmit County, where in 1707, a Spanish expedition set out from the San Juan Bautista Presidio in Coahuila. Led by Diego Ramón, this mission wasn't just about…

  • Bermuda, TX (Dimmit County) · 18.3 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Bermuda, first known as Bermuda Colony, was a farming community and real estate development six miles east of Carrizo Springs on the north side of the Nueces River in north central Dimmit County. The town takes its name…

  • Dentonio, TX · 18.3 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Dentonio, also known as Denton Colony, was real estate development sixteen miles southwest of Carrizo Springs in southwest Dimmit County. The settlement, named for its founder, Graham Denton, was among the largest of…

  • Valley Wells, TX · 18.3 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Valley Wells, also known as the Good Luck Colony, is eight miles southeast of Big Wells in northeastern Dimmit County. The name refers to the artesian wells once found in this part of the Nueces River valley. The town…

  • Palm, TX · 18.3 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Palm, originally known as Beachy, was a small farming town six miles northwest of Brundage on the old San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf line in north central Dimmit County. The community, first named for local farmer Jonas…

  • La Pryor, TX · 18.4 mi

    La Pryor sits nestled in the heart of South Texas, a place where the land speaks volumes. The terrain is mostly flat, sprawling plains covered in hardy mesquite trees, their deep roots a testament to the constant…

  • La Pryor, TX · 18.4 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Zavala County, and right here is La Pryor. This town owes its existence to Colonel Isaac T. Pryor, a man who owned vast ranches in the 1880s. He envisioned a new community and formed the Zavala…

  • Pryor, Isaac Thomas · 18.4 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Isaac T. (Ike) Pryor, cattleman, the third and youngest son of David Christopher and Emma Almira (McKissack) Pryor, was born in Tampa, Florida, on June 22, 1852. Orphaned at age five, he lived with relatives in Alabama…

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