COAL MINE, TEXAS. Coal Mine was on U.S. Highway 81 and the Missouri Pacific line in southeastern Medina County. Coal mines, worked by as many as 500 people at a time, precipitated the growth of mining camps southwest of Lytle in the 1880s. In 1881 the International-Great Northern Railroad built a rail line from Austin to Laredo that passed through Lytle. The community of Coal Mine developed on this line a mile southwest of Lytle and just north of the mining camps. The high-grade lignite produced at the mines was sold to the railroads until the advent of oil-burning locomotives. In 1888 Coal Mine consisted of a store, a bandstand, a main plaza, a dance hall, a Catholic church, and at least two schools. Thirty-eight students attended a one-teacher school there in 1907. By the 1940s Coal Mine consisted of a Catholic church and several dwellings, situated mostly north of the railroad tracks. Lytle annexed Coal Mine in 1969, and there were about 100 people living at the Coal Mine site in 1983.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Castro Colonies Heritage Association, The History of Medina County, Texas (Dallas: National Share Graphics, 1983).

Ruben E. Ochoa