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History in
a Pecan Shell
Gardendale was
a planned agricultural community developed by a San
Antonio developer in 1908 to take advantage of the newly irrigated
acreage in South Texas.
With rail connections on both the International-Great Northern and
the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf railroads, the success of the 16,000
acre project seemed assured.
Newspaper ads lured farmers from the Midwest with land priced at around
$25 per acre. The community, with its appealing name, was granted
a post office in 1909. By 1914, the town still had only twenty-five
people which slowly grew to seventy-five by the mid 1920s.
But even though the land was irrigated, many of the farmers plots
were too small to be viable. Caught between the inadequate plots and
the Great Depression, many farms failed.
The town lost its school in the mid-1940s and whatever lone business
remained had closed by the mid 1960s. The designation of “ghost town”
had been applied by a La Salle county historian, although the population
of fifty-nine (given in 1975) wasn’t too far off the peak population
of the 1920s. The population was still given as fifty-nine for the
1990 census. |
| Texas
Escapes, in its purpose to preserve historic, endangered and vanishing
Texas, asks that anyone wishing to share their local history, stories,
landmarks and recent or vintage photos, please contact
us. |
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