COMMUNITY HISTORIES
Bandera | Lakehills | Medina | Pipe Creek | Tarpley | Vanderpool
Bandera's dual history
By Stephanie Day
The history of the Bandera can be divided into two parts: Polish and non-Polish settlers. Both wrote the rich tapestry of history with hard work, faith and grit and both still claim community-building descendants 150 years later.
Thomas Odom, A.M. Milstead and P.D. Saner brought their families to the area in the spring of 1852 and camped along the Medina River where they engaged in turning cypress trees into roofing shingles.
John James and Charles de Montel arrived in 1853 to acquire land and lay out a town site. Their survey established Bandera as a town. They also built a horse-powered sawmill for cypress lumber.
Amasa Clark is celebrated as Bandera's first permanent settler. He lived to be 101 and had a total of 19 children. He survived an attack by robbers along the road to San Antonio, a traumatic drought and an equally traumatic flood and started a successful business, "Elmdale Nursery," where hundreds of his pear trees still stand today. His ranch has been recognized in a Texas Family Land Heritage Program. "Old Man Clark" attributed his long life to the healthy climate of Bandera County and to the healthy lifestyle-no tobacco or alcohol. At age 101, he rode his horse to town to vote and still worked his farm. Today, Clark's great-granddaughter and husband, Barbara and Steve Skipper, are working to restore Elmdale Nursery.
Elder Lyman Wight and a colony of approximately 250 Mormons arrived in Bandera around March 1, 1854. After only a few months in Bandera, the group of Latter Day Saints moved 12 miles down the Medina River and set up their camp which is now covered by Medina Lake and is still known locally as "Mormon Camp."
Bandera's first Polish settlers arrived in Bandera in 1855, six weeks after the first Polish church was founded in Panna Maria, and organized St. Stanislaus parish, the second oldest Polish parish in the United States-with Panna Maria holding the distinction of being the oldest. The names of these Polish settlers continue to be represented in Bandera's present history and progress: Anderwald, Kindla, Mazurek, Dugosh, Kalka, Jureczki, Adamietz. Leopold Moczgemba, who led the Polish settlers from Panna Maria to Bandera, is Medina Superintendent Randy Moczgemba's father's great-uncle.
Most of the Polish settlers found employment with de Montel, James and John H. Herndon cutting cypress roofing shingles for sale in San Antonio. Some were skilled carpenters. Each family was given one town lot on which to build a home along with an option to purchase farmland near Bandera. John Adamietz served as a county commissioner and deputy sheriff. Albert Adamietz held the office of county treasurer. Kaspar Dugosh became Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace. The 1956 petition to separate Bandera from Bexar County was signed by John Pyka, Joseph Knappik and Albert Haiduk. Haiduk survived an attack by Indians. Haiduk's wife-fearful that a light would attract another attack-cut the arrow out in the dark. Theodore Kindla, a 25-year-old shepherd, was killed by indians in the summer of 1862.
Hendrick Arnold, a free black man, was given a vast tract of land for his faithful service in the young Republic of Texas. He was commended for his bravery and fighting ability in the siege and capture of San Antonio in 1835, then fought in the battle of San Jacinto which won the independence of Texas. Bandera's black cemetery is named the Hendrick Arnold-Bertha Tryon Cemetery in his honor.
Given that Bandera's early history was carved-literally-from cypress wood, why has Bandera become known as "the Cowboy Capital of the World?" Some claim the large number of dude ranches in the area corraled the name. Some claim it is because Bandera has the largest per capita number of world champion cowboys, as evidenced by the monument on the courthouse lawn designed by the late artist Norma Jean Anderwald. Others point to Bandera's Great Western Trail Heritage Park and the marker commemorating Bandera's role as a starting point for cattle drives from Bandera to Dodge City, Kansas. With the establishment of Camp Verde in 1856 as a fort, Bandera Pass became a popular route to the north, somewhat protected from Indian attack by the U.S. Calvary. The name "Bandera"-banner or flag in Spanish-is thought by some historians to have sprung from a flag flown at Bandera Pass to mark Indian territory (The Apache Indians kept their side of the treaty). Camp Verde gained acclaim as the location of a disappointing and unsuccessful experiment with camels, an idea pushed by then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. The first and last brigade of 25 of the more than 70 camels from Camp Verde made a trek to Fort Yuma, Ariz. in 1857. The camels proved hard to herd and their feet were not designed to negotiate the hard rocky surface of the Texas Hill County. Amasa Clark was one of the camel herders at Camp Verde and made two pillows from camel hair off camels he sheared himself. He gave one to J. Marvin Hunter for the Frontier Times Museum and kept one for his burial.
By the time colonists arrived in the U.S., Native Americans were already slow cooking meatincluding whole lizards and alligators-over slow burning fires. By the early 1700s, barbecuing parties had become a popular social event. President George Washington threw a barbecue in 1773. President Abraham Lincoln's parents served barbecued sheep at their wedding dinner. In Bandera, volunteer organizations have depended on annual barbecues to raise funds for years and have never been disappointed. To serve customers in the dearth of events, restaurants specializing in barbecue have galloped into town and saddled up along Main Street.
Other unique facts about Bandera: the first airplane landed in the Medina River Loop in 1921, narrowly missing a telephone line; the first regular preacher was "Fighting Andrew Jackson Potter" who brought both Bible and gun to services as he traveled the circuit; bear, wolves, mountain lions and wildcats used to be as plentiful as deer are today; treasures at the Frontier Times Museum include a mounted gila monster, a two-headed kid goat, an eight-legged pig, and a shrunken human head that was stolen, then returned; Bandera's first newspaper was the Bandera Bugle, established in 1880; Frank Buckelew was captured by the Indians when he was 14 and spent nearly a year with them; scout, Indian fighter and preacher Policarpo Rodriguez built Polly's Chapel; it is possible that after the assignation of President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth escaped from a burning barn in Virginia where he was hiding and made his way to Bandera where he taught at the Bandera Institute under the name of W.J. Ryan.
Bandera's past is a richly colored historical tapestry whose threads weave into the present to draw hearts home. As newspaper founder, author, historian and Frontier Times Museum Founder J. Marvin Hunter wrote in One Hundred Years in Bandera, "You will come back" are the words that greet the departing stranger who visits Bandera land."
Today, as in 1953, Bandera residents still declare gladly, "you will come back."
Lakehills celebrates water and hill country culture
By Stephanie Day
Medina Lake covers 18 miles, is three miles wide at the widest point and spreads out along 110 miles of shoreline. Fishing at Medina Lake is excellent, with water 152 feet at the deepest point and running an average depth of 75 feet.
Lakehills nestles itself into the dragon-like folds of Medina Lake, complete with the Lakehills Civic Center to draw the community together and provide comfortable facilities for everything from feeding senior citizens to voting and hosting the Medina Lake Cajun Festival.
Lakehills was a community without a name until the arrival of the first post office in 1961. Residents were asked to submit names for the community and the name that garnered the most votes was "Lakehills," an appropriate name for a place where hills cup the clean sparkling lake water and offer it up to the sky as a canvas to splash and reflect colors.
The Medina Lake Betterment Association formed after the post office was built and pulled in enough community-minded volunteers to construct the Lakehills Civic Center in 1973. Then, armed with a unique fund-raising idea from originators Bob Caswell and wife Barbara Engel, the Great Gumbo Cookoff was held in 1981. It was so successful at funding the note and improvements on the civic center building that the Cajun-styled event became an annual event and evolved into the Medina Lake Cajun Festival, held the fourth Saturday in September.
Medina Lake was formed by the dam built in 1912 at a cost of $1,550,750. Materials were hauled across the rugged terrain by 16-mule wagons. Human hands with picks, shovels and fresnos (hand scoops pulled by mule) completed the excavation work for the foundation. The dam is 125 feet wide at the base, 25 feet wide at the top and rises 164 feet above the bedrock of the Medina River. The gravity flow dam, held in place by holes drilled into the solid bedrock and filled with concrete, is historically significant because it relies on its bulk of solid concrete for strength and durability rather than concrete and reinforcement metal. It was the largest dam in Texas when it was completed and the fourth largest dam in the United States.
The community of Lakehills followed the success of the irrigation lake, slowly filling up with residents around Medina Lake as the lake filled up with water. Lakehills has grown from a fish-camp community with small lots sold at ridiculously low prices in magazines to a community that has a state-of-the-art library and medical clinic, several churches, multimillion dollar lakefront homes, stores, restaurants, a county park, RV parks and assorted businesses.
Indian raids slowed the writing of Medina's first chapter of history
Medina takes its name from the Medina River which historians believe was named in 1689 by Spaniard Alonso de Leon in honor of noted engineer and scholar Pedro Medina. The river has been both friend and foe to the town named after it, used by pioneer families for bathing and washing clothes and cutting the town off from the rest of the world when it floods.
When Deputy Sheriff Jack Phillips, the last person in Bandera County to be killed by Indians, was killed in Seco Canyon by Native Americans in 1876, H.H. Carmichael decided that his recently purchased property in what is now Medina was too risky an investment.
Carmichael had been building a home in Medina, but fearing that the location was unsafe for his family, he had the home torn down and moved to Bandera. He sold the property to Parker and Ladd in 1878. They built their home, which is still standing and is known as the Nesting Place, in 1878. The house was issued a historical marker in 1965.
Between 1871 and 1879, the land around what is now known as Medina was swapped as frequently as family recipes and tall tales. When word spread that attacks from Native Americans had stopped, Medina experienced a rush of new settlers and new businesses.
Tom Sheppard has been called the "Father of Medina" and was operating a store there by 1881, the year Bandera built its new jail. The post office opened in 1880 and the rock building that now houses Hatfield Realty was built in 1888. By 1900, Medina had a gin, corn mill, hotel, private bank, two churches, three general stores and 150 residents. Ranching was the primary occupation.
With threat of Indian attack a distant memory and the promise of motorized transportation, Medina's population climbed to 400 by 1914. When the Great Depression hit, Medina's population dropped to 250 as residents moved away in search of jobs. Like a repeating pattern of the town's history-leaving and returning-Medina recovered quickly and boasted of 475 residents by the late 1940s. Until 1980, residents struggled to make livestock ranching and hunting leases pay the bills.
Baxter Adams brought apple farming to Medina in 1980. His experiments with orchards of dwarf apple trees were so successful that other hill country residents started clearing cedar and planting apple trees. The first apples were ready for sale in 1984. The dwarf trees produced regular-sized apples sweeter than large-tree varieties and able to tantalize consumers with tree-fresh apples in mid-summer when only last year's cold storage apples were otherwise available. Between 1,000 and 2,500 dwarf trees could be planted in one acre and an industry was born. Apples revitalized Medina. The Texas Department of Agriculture declared Medina the "Apple Capital of Texas" in 1989. Some 300,000 trees in the Medina area produced 100 tons of fruit in 1990 as the population hit 515.
Meanwhile, with no tax revenue to support the unincorporated town, Medina residents pulled together to form the Texas Development Corporation and turned apples into cash for the town by hosting an annual fundraising event, the Medina Apple Festival. The family-friendly apple festival ran for 18 years.
Medina's next chapter in history is waiting for a new author to pen it.
Pipe Creek more than a two-sided city limit sign on one post
By Stephanie Day
Pipe Creek's first residents were Lipan Apache Indians who settled near streams and springs.
Some tribes specialized in making arrowheads while others made beads, blankets or pottery. It appears from a study of Indian mounds in the area that the tribes traded with each other to meet their needs. Native Americans within a mile of the Barrel House in Pipe Creek near the Babbitt homestead used mussel shells for arrowheads. The Indians seemed to have left the area by 1876.
Pipe Creek takes its name from the stream that flows through it. According to historian J. Marvin Hunter's account, Bandera's first settlers-Thomas Odem, A.M. Milestead and Pat D. Saner-traveled through the area in 1852. Odem lost in pipe at the creek and the name stuck. Other accounts state that Odem later found the pipe in the creek-as dry as the creek bed was at that time due to a continuing drought.
During the early years, jobs were scarce and Pipe Creek's location made commuting to work nearly impossible. The non-Native American settlers "made due" and made whatever implements they needed-even hewing livestock watering tanks out of solid rock. Most people did not paint their houses. Money for children's shoes was scarce. Some of the early settlers left to find an easier life. Others found innovative ways to supplement their income. They made charcoal and took it by horse and wagon to San Antonio to sell. They sold firewood, fence posts, molasses, milk, butter and eggs and handcrafts. The Homestead Act encouraged settlers to acquire the land abundant wild game-even bears-made it possible to feed their families.
According to the 1870 census, only two houses existed in Pipe Creek in 1870. By 1990, that number had risen to 70. The 1950s brought in a flow of new residents who bought property in subdivisions and commuted to San Antonio to work, made possible by improved roads and motorized vehicles. Justice of the Peace Ed Jennings, who ran a general store at the intersection of FM 1383 and SH 16 in the building that now houses the Pipe Creek Junction CafŽ, put up a two-sided "Pipe Creek City Limits" on one post. But Jennings' joke about Pipe Creek's small size failed to deter new residents. They continued to arrive and carve their own slice of heaven out of the Texas Hill Country soil around Pipe Creek. Today, the Pipe Creek Post office holds 692 post office boxes for patrons and services a rural route delivery of 2,830.
"Hondo Canyon" bows out to "Tarpley"
The first humans in the Hondo ("deep" in Spanish) Canyon, now known as Tarpley, were Native Americans who settled along the banks of Hondo and William's Creek. The last Native American in the Hondo Canyon was ejected from the valley in 1880 by European settlers.
Spanish explorers hit the region by 1577 as evidenced by the date carved on the ledge of a small rock cave. That is the oldest recorded date found in the State of Texas. A Spanish map of the area became available in 1768 and by 1775, a published English map accurately rendered the "Hondo River" and other landmarks.
The first Tarpley landowner is believed to have been a Mexican man, Louis de Carvajal de la Cueva, who was granted a large tract of land by the King of Spain for capturing English pirates. The pirates were actually starving and Carvajal was a slave holder-which begs to question history as to the integrity of Carvajal's brave deed. His land grant was lost when he was burned at the stake for pretending to be a Catholic. Carvajal was born a Jew in Portugal and may have been involved in the 1577 silver-finding expedition to the Hondo Canyon whose memory, even now, is etched into rock.
Five tracts of land were granted to settlers in Bandera County as early as 1841, but settlers are believed to have been in the area as early as 1830. Bandera County was shaved off Uvalde and Bexar counties into a separate county in 1853. The first abstract in the Tarpley valley was granted to Antonio Gomez in 1847, 4,428 acres. Family cemeteries prove that settlers were present into he Tarpley area prior to the Civil War. A United States Post Office was established for the "Hondo Canyon" in 1878. Early postmasters were M.C. Click, John Gates and George Prickett.
The post office moved to its present location in 1897 and renamed "Tarpley" after George Prickett's infant son Clarence Tarpley Prickett. In the 1895 census, 78 people were recorded in Tarpley. Wood-frame homes were joined by a post office, church, black smith's, school, general store and a cemetery. The Hudspeth home served as a school. Before the boll weevil ruined cotton crops, Tarpley enjoyed the auspices of hotel, drug store, telephone company, school, general store and physician. The school closed in the 1950s and the two-room school house, which was constructed in 1921, is being restored by the community for use as a civic center.
By 2000, the census recorded a mere 20 people in Tarpley, yet Tarpley boats an RV campground with water aerobics, two restaurants, the Steel Horse Cafe and the famous Mac and Ernie's. The post office continues to operate, serving the community that was named after a forgotten child who made enough of an impression on history to fade out Hondo Canyon and ring in "Tarpley."
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