HELOTES, TEXAS. Helotes is on State Highway 16 some sixteen miles northwest of downtown San Antonio in northwestern Bexar County. It was first settled around 1856 by Mexicans who intermarried with the Apache Indians camped in the vicinity. A man named Chaca was supposed to have been the first person to build a house and cultivate a cornfield at the site and may have been responsible for the name, which in Spanish means "green roasting ear of corn." Another tradition claims that the name derived from the problems Anglo settlers had with Indians stealing their ripening corn. Yet another story has it that San Antonio vegetable-sellers could always rely on the town for corn, even in periods of drought. A post office opened at Helotes in 1873, and by 1885 the community had a hotel, a school, a general store, a blacksmith, and a population of fifty. By 1914 its population had climbed to 700. Between 1930 and 1945 the number of residents fell to 100, but after the 1960s the town grew steadily. In 1982 its population was 475. During the 1980s some San Antonio residents moved to the area. The town incorporated in the 1980s and in 1990 had 1,535 inhabitants and forty-eight businesses.

Christopher Long