The Depot That Rode In on Two Flatcars RoadyGoat

1881

Lytle owes its exact spot to a soured land deal. In 1881 the International-Great Northern Railroad struck a bargain with B. G. Andrews to place a depot on his land, called Andrews Station. The deed fell into dispute, and Andrews refused to hand it over. Cattleman John T. Lytle instead secured land about three miles southwest, near the Lytle-McDaniel Ranch. One morning in 1882 railroad crews jacked the Andrews Station building onto two flatcars and hauled it to the new site, which took the name Lytle Station. A post office followed in 1883, with casketmaker W. J. Garnand as first postmaster. By 1884 the town held about fifty people, a school, a hotel, and a church. Today Lytle sits in a rare three-county corner, spilling from Atascosa into Bexar and Medina.

The Man This Town Is Named For Blazed a Cattle Trail RoadyGoat

1871

The name on the town belongs to John T. Lytle, one of the great figures of the open-range cattle era. Born in Pennsylvania in 1844, he came to Atascosa County as a young man and regained his health working on his uncle's ranch. In 1871 he partnered with his cousin Thomas McDaniel and began trailing herds north to the Kansas railheads. His firm ultimately moved more than half a million cattle up the trails. His boldest stroke came in 1874, when he and McDaniel blazed what became the Western Trail, driving 3,500 longhorns from Medina County, just here at the town's doorstep, all the way to the Red Cloud Agency at Fort Robinson in western Nebraska. That route carried Texas beef north for years. Lytle died in San Antonio in 1907.

The Lignite That Fed the Locomotives RoadyGoat

1881

About a mile southwest of Lytle, in southeastern Medina County, a settlement grew up around something buried in the ground: lignite. Lignite is a soft, young brown coal, formed from peat that never fully hardened into the black bituminous coal of the eastern fields. After the International-Great Northern line reached the area in 1881, mines here dug high-grade lignite that was sold straight to the railroads to feed their steam locomotives. At peak the workings employed as many as 500 people, and a community called Coal Mine formed with a store, a plaza, a dance hall, a church, and schools. The engineering that created the demand also killed it: as railroads switched to oil-burning locomotives, the market for lignite collapsed. Lytle annexed the old Coal Mine site in 1969.

Lytle, John Thomas

1871

John Thomas Lytle, traildriver and rancher, son of Francis and Margaret (Collins) Lytle, was born on October 8, 1844, at McSherrystown, Adams County, Pennsylvania. He moved with his family in 1860 to San Antonio, Texas, where he worked in the Bexar county clerk's office until 1861, when poor health forced him to resign. He then moved to a ranch in Atascosa County owned by an uncle, William Lytle, where outdoor work restored his health. From 1863 until 1865 he served in Company H, Thirty-second Texas Cavalry (Wood's Regiment), and rose to the rank of sergeant. After his discharge he returned to the Atascosa County ranch, but in 1867 he established his own ranch near Castroville. In 1871 Lytle formed a partnership with a cousin, Thomas M. McDaniel, in what is now Lytle, Texas, for the purpose of trailing the herds of area ranchers to northern railheads and ranges. During the next three years he personally conducted a number of drives to Kansas. In 1874 Charles A. Schreiner of Kerrville and John W. Light of Kimble County joined the firm, thereby increasing its capital and prestige. The trailing firm operated out of Lytle and Kerrville and became one of the most outstanding in Texas; it ultimately handled more than a half million cattle. The size of the operation forced Lytle to turn management of trail herds over to employees, but he continued to supervise the organization of the drives in Texas and the sale of cattle at the railheads. In 1887 Schreiner bought full control of the firm, whereupon Lytle became general manager of the American Cattle Syndicate's Texas holdings. In 1891 he resigned to devote full time to his own ranching enterprises. With George W. Saunders and Jesse Presnall, he had in 1886 established the Union Stock Yards in San Antonio; three years later, with Thomas Jefferson Moore , John Rufus Blocker , and W. H. Jennings, he purchased the half-million-acre Piedra Blanca Ranch in Coahuila, Mexico; he was also one of the founders of the Southwestern Livestock Commission Company at Fort Worth. In 1901 he was elected vice president and member of the executive committee of the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association ( see TEXAS AND SOUTHWESTERN CATTLE RAISERS ASSOCIATION ). Three years later he was named secretary of the organization, a salaried position he held until his death. Lytle married Elizabeth Noonan of Medina County in 1869; they had two children. He died of influenza on January 10, 1907, in San Antonio.

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Great Western Trail

1874

The Great Western Trail, a nineteenth-century longhorn cattle trail, stretched 2,000 miles from Mexico, across nine Great Plains states, and into two provinces in Canada. Its brief existence from 1874 to 1893 helped revitalize the Texas and Great Plains economy after the Civil War and captured the imagination of Americans. Cattle trailing along the Great Western Trail provided food for American Indians and established open range ranching . It also left a legacy of a shared three-country socioeconomic and multicultural heritage, and the preservation of its 150-year history has inspired insight into the contemporary trail era and a number of historical projects in the twenty-first century. In 1874 South Texas rancher John T. Lytle initiated the Great Western Trail to meet a major humanitarian need-to supply longhorns to provide beef for the Sioux, relegated to surviving on small animals on the Great Plains. Lytle secured a U. S. government contract in late winter 1873 to drive 3,500 head (3,600 to compensate for losses) of large, aged steers to Red Cloud Agency at Camp Robinson just north of the Niobrara River in northwestern Nebraska by August 1, 1874. The Great Western Trail originated on both sides of the Rio Grande between Mexico and the United States. In 1874 Lytle's cowboys rode hundreds of miles across the Nueces Strip in South Texas to gather free-ranging longhorns as far south as Webb County near the Rio Grande low-water crossing at Laredo and west along the river at the Eagle Pass low-water crossing in Maverick County. From Laredo, the cowboys pushed the longhorns up the historic Old Trail across several counties, Webb, LaSalle, and Frio, to Medina County and to Lytle, Texas, and the gathering pens to brand them with Lytle's 7D road brand on the left loin. Other longhorns were herded from Eagle Pass across several counties, Maverick, Uvalde, and Medina, to the pens at Lytle to prepare the herd for Nebraska. One of Lytle's drovers, Frank Collinson , whose reminiscences were published in Life in the Saddle (1963), said, "We beat out a trail over sections of the country that had not been traveled before, and over which thousands of cattle would later be driven to the ranges in Montana, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado." The post-Civil War economic devastation and the economic-cultural clash among the Plains Indians, buffalo hunters, and settlers, with intervention by the U. S. military, were factors that created the need for the Great Western Trail. Its economic purpose was twofold. The first was humanitarian-providing large, mature longhorns for sustenance for some twenty-four American Indian northern states reservations. The second purpose was market-driven-involving the establishment of open-range ranching and requiring seasoned ranch hands (including Civil War veterans, freedmen, and Mexican vaqueros ) who could select and deliver contracted bulls, cows, heifers, and even steers to stock the vast grasslands, now void of buffalo . Lytle's successful 1874 introductory trip north to Nebraska immediately encouraged gathering longhorns across South Texas even east to the Matamoros Trail originating south of Brownsville in Mexico. On March 16, 1874, Lytle left South Texas on his first Great Western Trail trip north with his cousin Tom McDaniel and a trail outfit. They totaled eighteen men, including a cook and two experienced horse wranglers with 100 horses, and 2,600 longhorns (1,000 would be added). Leaving Lytle, Texas, they swam the cattle across the Medina River below Castroville, then to Comanche Creek in Mason County, where for three days they received and branded 1,000 head to complete their contracted 3,600 for Nebraska. Three cowboys left the outfit at that time. Going up the route that would be named the Great Western Trail, Lytle moved his herd northward from Bandera to Kerrville in Kerr County, where later he and Tom McDaniel would partner with Charles A. Schreiner of Kerrville and John W. Light of

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Bobbitt, Robert Lee

1911

Robert Lee Bobbitt was born near Hillsboro, Texas, the son of Joseph A. and Laura Duff Bobbitt. He graduated from North Texas Normal College in 1911, and from the University of Texas Law School in 1915. After opening a law practice in Laredo, Bobbitt married Mary B. Westbrook on April 20, 1918, while an officer in the 90th Infantry Division during World War I. Bobbitt was elected to the Texas Legislature in 1923, served three two-year terms, the last as Speaker of the House of Representatives, and was appointed Attorney General in 1929. He returned to private practice in San Antonio in 1931, and served on the Board of Directors of the Texas College of Arts and Industries. In 1935, he was selected as an Associate Justice of the San Antonio Court of Civil Appeals, a post from which he resigned in 1937 to receive an appointment as the Chairman of the Texas Highway Commission. During Bobbitt's six-year term, the Texas Highway Department made great strides toward a goal of a connected system of paved roads in the state. In 1944, Bobbitt was a presidential elector, and, in 1958, was appointed to his last public service post, as a member of the Board of Regents of North Texas State College, his Alma Mater. 1974

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Natalia, TX

1912

Natalia is on the main line of the Missouri Pacific Railroad and Interstate Highway 35, sixteen miles southeast of Hondo in southeastern Medina County. It was founded by the Medina Irrigation Company in 1912 and named after Natalie Pearson, daughter of Fred Stark Pearson , prime motivator of the irrigation project and builder of the Medina Dam. The community has had a post office since 1913; Natalie's name was spelled wrong. After the deaths of Pearson and his wife, who were passengers on the Lusitania when it went down in 1915, the Medina Irrigation Company was forced into receivership. It was subsequently incorporated under the name of Medina Irrigated Farms in 1931 after several failed attempts at refinancing. Bonds in the amount of $2.5 million were issued to pay for Medina valley irrigation and to provide a loan fund for prospective land purchasers. Charles F. C. Ladd acted as chief sales agent for the developers. His campaign was successful, and the town grew with the prosperity of the surrounding agricultural venture. In 1939 it had 400 residents, as compared with 150 in 1933. In 1931 the Griggs Canning plant was established in Natalia. In peak seasons this plant employed 500 people to can the many varieties of vegetables grown in the surrounding irrigated valley. In 1950 Medina Irrigated Farms was sold for a token fee to a group of local residents and now operates as a virtual public utility under the name of Bexar-Medina-Atascosa Counties Water Control and Improvement District No. 1. In 1976 the canning company was sold and converted into the Gold Bond Manufacturing Company, which produces carpet padding. Natalia was incorporated in 1968 under an aldermanic type of government with a mayor and four aldermen elected by the residents. Natalia Independent School District maintains an accredited public school system for grades K-12. The town continued to increase in population, despite a downturn in the late 1960s. In 1988 it had 1,514 residents and twelve businesses. The population in 1990 was 1,545. By 2000 the population was 1,663.

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Trimble Cemetery

1869

Edwin Trimble (1808-1869) left a properous life in Kentucky and brought his family to Texas in 1854, settling in this area following the Civil War. This site became a burial ground upon his death from a snakebite. Laid to rest with him are his wife, Dorothy G. Trimble (1808-1875), killed by a robber; Edwin's mother, Mary S. Trimble (1786-1878); Son, Robert Trimble (1850-1877), Lillie McDaniel (1865-1879) Daughter of T.M. McDaniel; Grace Lytle (1880-1881), Daughter of W.T. Lytle; Edwin's grandson, J.G. Trimble, Jr. (1862-1884); Cattleman Thomas M. McDaniel (1838-1887); and early San Antonio resident and businessman William T. Lytle (1850-1891). Historic Texas Cemetery - 2001

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Benton City Cemetery

1869

Benton City Cemetery (Established 1870). First public cemetery in this community, which was famous in early days for its outstanding school, aggressive businesses, and newspaper, the Benton City "Era." Site was given by James M. Jones, farmer-livestock raiser and leading citizen, whose rock house stood nearby. Jones and family moved here in 1869, when Atascosa County (with Amphion the county seat) was a frontier region of south Texas. Interred here are pioneers and veterans of Indian warfare, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and other conflicts.

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Lytle, Texas

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