Hondo
Hondo, Medina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Spanish explorers named the deep gully 'El Arroyo Hondo' long before Henri Castro's colonists began settling the area in the 1840s. The town took shape after the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad platted a townsite in 1881; a post office followed in 1882, and the county seat moved here from Castroville in 1892. Hondo grew as a cotton and trade center, struck oil in the 1920s, and exploded during World War II when an Army Air Corps base pushed its population toward 12,000 before the base closed in 1946.
Why it matters
Hondo's growth from Spanish arroyo to railroad county seat to wartime airfield town captures how rails and the military repeatedly reshaped small Texas communities.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Henri Castro
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bandera, "Cowboy Capital of the World"
Bandera, TX
The Texas cowboy's craft descended from the Mexican vaqueros, and nowhere did the tradition run deeper than in Bandera County, where boys learned to ride and drive cattle young. From 1874 to 1894 the town served as a staging ground for enormous herds bound up the Western Cattle Trail toward Kansas and beyond. Local rodeos began in the 1920s and produced world champions like Toots Mansfield, and by 1948 the press had crowned Bandera the 'Cowboy Capital of the World.'
Great Western Cattle Trail
Bandera, TX
When Captain John T. Lytle drove 3,500 head from South Texas toward Nebraska in 1874, he helped blaze what became the Great Western Cattle Trail—the longest of the great nineteenth-century cattle roads, reaching from Texas through Dodge City all the way into Canada. Bandera's abundant water and grass made it the trail's natural southern staging point. Over two decades, millions of longhorns and tens of thousands of cowboys followed the route before barbed wire and quarantine laws closed it in the 1890s.
Frio County
Pearsall, TX
Though Spanish explorers passed through this brushy South Texas country as early as 1690, Frio County was not organized until after the Civil War. The county seat shifted from Frio City to Pearsall when the International & Great Northern Railroad arrived in 1883, and in 1876 a Texas Ranger camp under Major John B. Jones guarded settlers against raids. The legendary frontiersman "Big Foot" Wallace spent his last years here.
Huebner-Onion Homestead and Stagecoach Stop
Leon Valley, TX
Settlement here began in 1858 when Joseph Huebner, an Austrian immigrant and San Antonio businessman, bought land and built limestone structures along the creek that still bears his name. He opened a stagecoach stop on the San Antonio–to–Bandera line, offering blacksmithing, fresh stock, and shelter to travelers stranded by the flooded creek. In 1930 the property passed to Judge John F. Onion and his wife Harriet, and grassroots preservation later saved the homestead as a natural and educational site.