Name: Sabinal, Texas
Address: Sabinal, TX

The Honey Capital of the World RoadyGoat

You might not guess it driving through, but this brush country was one of the great honey districts of the world. The title itself belongs to Uvalde, twenty miles down the road, honored as the Honey Capital of the World back at the 1905 World's Fair — but the bees never respected a city limit, and Sabinal sits squarely in the same nectar belt. The secret is in the brush. The native guajillo and catsclaw that thrive in this thin, rocky soil throw out blossoms in March and early April with extraordinarily rich nectar. Beekeepers worked thousands of hives through the country around Sabinal and Uvalde, and the honey they pulled off was prized for its exceptionally light color and its delicate flavor. The railroad hauled carloads of it out of here and shipped it across the nation. It was a perfect marriage of local ecology and human patience, turning a thorny, half-worthless bush into liquid gold.

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The Science of Sabinal Honey RoadyGoat

The reason this brush country became famous for honey isn't just history — it's botany. The landscape around you is a transition zone, with soils that support a very particular community of native plants, and the star of that community is the guajillo bush, Acacia berlandieri, an acacia native to southwest Texas and northern Mexico. In March and early April it throws out a profusion of small, pale, fragrant blossoms, and the bees go straight for them. What they make from that nectar is a very light, almost water-white honey with a mild, delicate flavor, and people who know it will tell you they catch a hint of lavender. It also resists crystallizing, which made it commercially valuable and easy to ship. Catsclaw and huisache add to the nectar flow, but guajillo is the one that matters. This is why Uvalde, just down the road, was crowned the honey capital of the world, and why Sabinal shipped the very same gold. A specific plant, in a specific climate, on specific soil — geography you can taste.

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D'Hanis, TX RoadyGoat

D'Hanis has a rich ethnic heritage, primarily shaped by the German emigrants who first settled the area. The town was founded by Count von D'Hanis and was settled by 29 Alsatian families from present-day France and Germany. Many residents spoke Alsatian and German, and some Alsatians, being ethnic Germans, maintained their German culture, language, and traditions. This blend of Alsatian and German heritage has left a lasting impact on D'Hanis, influencing its community and identity.

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John M. Davenport

1827

(February 8, 1827 - October 28, 1859) Stock-raiser and captain of a company of volunteer Indian fighters. Killed near here by 30 Comanches. Inquest for him was first in area for Indian victim. Settlers and soldiers from Fort Inge trailed the band 200 miles. After battle, found Davenport's gun on one of the Indians. (1969)

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Sabinal, TX

1854

Sabinal, originally known as Hammer's Station, is on U.S. Highway 90 and the Southern Pacific Railroad, twenty miles northeast of Uvalde in east central Uvalde County. The first settler at the site was Thomas B. Hammer, who established a stage stop there on the east bank of the Sabinal River in 1854. Other early settlers were Louis Peter, Peter Rheiner (future father-in-law of Vice President John Nance Garner ), John Kenedy, and George Johnson. A post office was opened at the stage stop on October 19, 1854, with Hammer as postmaster. A soldier by the name of Austerman, who arrived at Hammer's Station in the late 1850s en route from Del Rio to Castroville, recalled a community hungry for news from the outside world. He also remembered seeing long trains of freight wagons on the road by Hammer's Station carrying supplies to settlers and soldiers on the far western frontier. In 1856 the Second United States Cavalry established Camp Sabinal on the riverbank opposite Hammer's Station, to protect people and commerce on the road from San Antonio to El Paso and to protect the settlers from hostile Indians and outlaws. Nevertheless, Thomas Hammer was killed by bandits in 1857. By the time of the Civil War Sabinal was on the mail route and wagon trail from San Antonio to Mexico. In 1874 pioneer merchant Louis M. Peters built a successful general store. Soon after the railroad arrived in Sabinal in 1881, Peters moved the store to a site east of the river that eventually became part of the center of town. With the coming of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1881 the rest of the community was moved to its present site. Angora goats imported from Turkey were brought into the Sabinal area in 1881. By 1884 Sabinal had an estimated population of 150, a public school, two churches, and a hotel; local ranchers were shipping wool, livestock, and hides, and Peters was serving as postmaster. By 1893 two hotels, the Mitchell House and the Sabinal Hotel, were serving a growing number of visitors to the city. Corn, cotton, oats, and sugarcane were cultivated on farms around the community, many of which utilized the "aer-motor water well windmill" available at John T. Wilson's lumberyard to irrigate their crops. Uvalde County school records in 1900 showed 156 students in three schools in Sabinal. In 1906 Sabinal had a population of 500 and was surrounded by 1,500 acres of cultivated land. The town was incorporated that year, and W. D. Heard served as mayor soon thereafter. In the same year the Sabinal Telephone Company was granted a franchise, the city water and fire departments were organized, and the cotton gins operating in the area reached the substantial number of six. Sabinal Christian College was founded in 1907 by members of the Church of Christ. By 1911 Sabinal was a commercial and agricultural center; an estimated 35,000 acres was under cultivation in the area, and as many as five general stores supplied an estimated population of 2,500. The cotton industry was burgeoning, and local stock raisers were producing thousands of hogs, cattle, sheep, and goats. In 1914 Sabinal had a population of 2,000, who supported Baptist, Catholic, Christian, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, a high school and a grade school, an ice plant, two banks, three cotton gins, and a weekly newspaper called the Sentinel , started by publisher Harold Baldwin in 1890. Poor patronage, inadequate financial backing, and crop failures led to the closing of Sabinal Christian College on May 15, 1917. A new high school was constructed near the center of town in 1925, when Sabinal had an estimated population of 1,458. In 1935 ranchers in the Sabinal area principally raised cattle, sheep, and goats; they produced thousands of pounds of wool and mohair annually. Area farmers raised oats, corn, sorghum grains, and cotton. The town population that year was approximately 1,600. A school for Hispanics had recently been completed. Sometime in the 1940s the Trio Independent School Dis

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Camp Sabinal

1856

Established July 12, 1856 by Capt. Albert G. Brackett, Second U. S. Cavalry as a protection to the San Antonio - El Paso Road and frontier settlers. Occupied by Federal troops until November 1856, later served as a Ranger camp.

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Sabinal Christian College

1907

Sabinal Christian College was founded in 1907 on eight acres one mile east of Sabinal in Uvalde County by members of the Church of Christ, aided by citizens of Sabinal and the surrounding territory. J. F. Dunn, D. F. Nichols, and Monroe Fenley arranged for S. T. Hutchinson, a Sabinal contractor, to begin construction of the college. Hutchinson used red bricks from Laredo and lumber from two Sabinal lumberyards to construct the main college building, a two-story structure consisting of six classrooms and a 300-seat auditorium. The purpose of the founders was to provide Bible teaching and religious training in addition to the usual literary curriculum. Courses in Bible, business administration, music, and speech, as well as usual academic studies, were taught at primary, intermediate, high school, and academy levels. The college was supported by tuition fees and donations. Students were required to pay $3.50 a week for board; tuition costs ranged from fifty cents a week for primary schooling to a dollar a week for college courses. The plant consisted of an administration building, a dining hall, a girls' dormitory, two boys' dormitories, and a music hall. The first session opened on September 10, 1907; G. H. P. Showalter was president, and 139 pupils were enrolled. A smallpox epidemic was responsible for a reduced first-year session. The second session opened on September 1, 1908, with W. A. Schultz as president; the school had a faculty of six and an enrollment of 143. In the face of growing financial difficulties at the college, President Schultz retired. In May 1909 Isaac E. Tackett, formerly connected with Southwestern Christian College at Denton, became president. He served four years, and during his administration the college reached a peak enrollment of 200 and had a faculty of nine. While Tackett was there Sabinal College published a yearbook called The Mirage . J. Paul Slayden became president in May 1913 and remained two terms. J. O. Garrett, who succeeded to the presidency in 1915, also supervised the school for two sessions. The college received inadequate financial backing because of World War I , the depressed market for cotton, and crop failures resulting from drought; it was closed on May 15, 1917.

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Sabinal

1700

Named by Spanish for Rio Sabina and Cypress trees along river. Town founded in 1854 by Thomas B. Hammer who operated a stage shop and was first postmaster. Despite Indian depredations, town thrived as settlers built homes, and a railroad reached here in 1881. In 1906, town was incorporated. Telephone service started. City water works and volunteer fire department organized. In 1907, Sabinal Christian College was founded. Closed in 1917. Cotton industry was foremost in early 1900's. Today, farming and ranching flourishing in community. (1967)

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Knippa, TX

1880

Knippa, originally known as Chatfield, is on the Southern Pacific Railroad, U.S. Highway 90, and the Frio River, between Sabinal and Uvalde in southeastern Uvalde County. It was named for founder George Knippa, who moved his family to the site in the 1880s. Knippa had been a frequent visitor to the semiarid Frio River area of Uvalde County in the 1870s and early 1880s, a period of abundant rainfall in the area, and witnessed an open country of luxuriant grazing land traversed by spring-fed rivers. He moved his family from Fayette County to the railroad siding of Chatfield soon after the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway had extended its railroad line west from San Antonio to Uvalde. The period of abundant rainfall in the Frio River region ended with the drought of the early 1890s, dashing the hopes of many of the farming families who had followed Knippa to the area. Around 1900 the rains returned, and a new wave of settlers, mostly Germans, moved to Knippa. A post office was opened in 1898. On February 16, 1898, the Uvalde County Commissioners Court established School District No. 12 at Knippa and authorized a school building. In 1900 fourteen students attended the one-teacher school. A two-room school was built in 1907. A mine for traprock, an igneous rock used in road construction, was opened west of Knippa around 1905 and attracted Mexican laborers to the area. The traprock quarried at Knippa was used to ballast the Southern Pacific Railroad. Because the quarry was originally opened up as a gold mine, it was said that all of the railroad ballast contained a small amount of gold. Most of the original settlers in the community were Lutherans. A Lutheran church was built on land donated by George Knippa in 1910. Church services, directed by Rev. Gottlieb Langer, were conducted in German. At the beginning of World War I , however, the Uvalde Council of Defense prohibited the use of German. The community responded by taking the council to court, and the prohibition was eventually rescinded by the United States Supreme Court. By 1914 Knippa had a population of fifty, telephone connections, two cotton gins, two general stores, and two lumber companies. The St. Joseph's Church, a Catholic mission, was constructed in 1913 through the efforts of Mr. and Mrs. W. F. Knippa. In 1915 a Baptist church was built in the community, with Reverend Rubottom as minister. A two-room school building was built in 1907. The school was moved to a brick structure in 1924 and was accredited in 1926. A small one-room school, constructed in 1927, served as a catechetical center and was the site of many Mexican-American social events. In 1929 Knippa had a estimated population of 400 and twelve businesses; by 1933 the population had dropped to an estimated 150. By the end of World War II and for the four succeeding decades the population was 325. In 1944 the Methodist, Baptist, and Church of Christ congregations were holding regular services at Knippa; the Church of Christ constructed a new building in 1948. Rev. Raymond Wolf, pastor of the Knippa Lutheran Church between 1957 and 1967, was selected Rural Minister of the Year for Texas in 1964. In 1990 St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Emmanuel Lutheran Church, and the Church of Christ were active in Knippa. The population was 360, and the town had nine businesses. In 2000 the town had 739 inhabitants and nineteen businesses.

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Sabinal, Texas

Music in Sabinal

Songs About Sabinal

Artists From Sabinal

Rivers & Roads in Song near Sabinal

History of Sabinal

The Honey Capital of the World RoadyGoat

The Science of Sabinal Honey RoadyGoat

D'Hanis, TX RoadyGoat

John M. Davenport

Sabinal, TX

Camp Sabinal

Sabinal Christian College

Sabinal

Knippa, TX

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