GARDENDALE, TEXAS (La Salle County). Gardendale, on Interstate Highway 35 five miles north of Cotulla in northwestern La Salle County, was one of several new settlements in the Winter Garden region^qv when irrigation^qv opened new land to farming in the early 1900s. The community was established about 1908 by the Hurst and Brundage Company, a San Antonio land-development firm. Because its 16,000-acre site was at the intersection of the International-Great Northern and the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf railroads it had an advantage over other developments. Most of the new settlers, who bought land at twenty-five to thirty dollars an acre, were from Missouri and Arkansas. Gardendale had a post office in 1909 and in 1914 had a population of twenty-five, a general store, and a gasoline station or auto-parts store. In 1925 the population was seventy-five. In 1931 the local school enrolled fifty students. But many of the early settlers were unable to support themselves on the small plots they had bought, and by the mid-1930s Gardendale had declined. In 1941 it had only one business, although its population supposedly remained at seventy-five. The town had lost its school by the mid-1940s. By 1965 no businesses were reported. In 1975 a historian of the county labeled Gardendale a "ghost town," although fifty-nine people reportedly still lived there. The population was still fifty-nine in 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Annette Martin Ludeman, La Salle: La Salle County (Quanah, Texas: Nortex, 1975).

John Leffler