Nellie Leo Schunior School
La Joya, Hidalgo County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This school's roots lie in the former town of Havana (2 mi. S), where between 1890 and 1944 area children, most of whom lived on nearby ranches, attended classes in a one-room schoolhouse. Nellie Leo Schunior (1878-1920), who later became the first superintendent of Chapin (now Edinburg) schools, taught in Havana from 1913 until 1916. Several years after her death, persistent flooding of the Rio Grande caused Havana residents to relocate their town to this area. They renamed the town La Joya, and built a new school in 1926 which they named in Schunior's honor. (1992)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The school's story begins in the vanished town of Havana, where from 1890 to 1944 ranch children learned in a one-room schoolhouse. Among their teachers was Nellie Leo Schunior, who taught there from 1913 to 1916 before becoming the first superintendent of the Chapin (now Edinburg) schools. After repeated Rio Grande floods forced Havana's residents to relocate and rename their town La Joya, they built a new school in 1926 and named it in Schunior's honor.
Why it matters
The school honors an early woman educational leader on the Rio Grande border and marks how flooding literally moved a South Texas community, carrying its schoolhouse and its namesake's memory to higher ground.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the decades around 1900, the lower Rio Grande Valley was ranch country. Wide pastures of brush and grassland ran up to the river, and families lived spread out across the land. A town in this part of South Texas was often little more than a cluster of homes, a store, a church, and, if the community was lucky, a schoolhouse.
The arrival of the railroad in the early 1900s began to change the Valley. Irrigation, farming, and new towns followed, and county governments began building real school systems. Before that, education in a rural place like Havana usually meant one room and one teacher, with children of every age learning side by side.
The river shaped everything. The Rio Grande gave the Valley its life and its farmland, but it also flooded again and again before large dams were built to control it. Communities near its banks had to weigh the value of the river against the damage it could do, and some, like Havana, finally chose to move.
People & events
For more than fifty years, from 1890 to 1944, the children of Havana went to school in a single room. Most of them came in from nearby ranches. Picture a mix of ages and abilities in one space, with the older students helping the younger ones and the teacher keeping it all moving.
Nellie Leo Schunior taught there from 1913 to 1916. She went on to become the first superintendent of the schools in Chapin, the town now called Edinburg. For a woman in those years, leading a school system was an unusual achievement, at a time when many school leadership jobs in Texas went to men. Her career went from a one-room classroom to running a district, which shows how much responsibility she earned in the young Valley.
She died in 1920 at about forty-two. A few years later, after the Rio Grande had flooded the town over and over, Havana's people moved their community to higher ground and gave it a new name, La Joya. When they built a new school in 1926, they named it after Nellie Leo Schunior. Their old teacher's name went with them to the new town.
Its place in the American story
All across rural America in the early twentieth century, one-room schoolhouses were giving way to larger, more organized schools. Women did much of that work as teachers, and a growing number moved into leadership. Schunior's path from a ranch-country classroom to a superintendent's office is a local version of a change that happened nationwide.
The school also tells a less familiar American story: towns that moved. Floods, railroads, and dams relocated many communities. Some disappeared, and others, like Havana, moved and renamed themselves. The people of Havana kept their community together through that move, and naming the school for their teacher was a way of saying who they still were.
On the border, this story has an extra layer. Schools in the Rio Grande Valley have long served the region's many ranching families, and a school's name becomes part of a town's memory. In honoring Schunior, La Joya made a local educator part of its identity for generations.
If you visit
La Joya sits in western Hidalgo County, not far from the Rio Grande. The landscape is flat and open, and the old ranch country is still easy to picture. The marker itself is the heart of the visit. Take a minute to imagine children riding in from the ranches to a one-room school a couple of miles to the south, at a town site that no longer exists.
Look around you with the river in mind. The town is here, and not two miles south, because the water kept rising. Standing on this ground helps explain how much floods shaped where Valley towns ended up.
This stop pairs well with a drive through the Rio Grande Valley. Edinburg, where Schunior later led the schools, is a short drive east, and you can follow her career from classroom to superintendent's office along the way. The region's wildlife refuges and riverside parks also show the Rio Grande as the force that once pushed this town to move. If the school is in session, please be respectful of the campus.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Nellie Leo Schunior
Themes & tags
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