VANDENBURG, TEXAS. Vandenburg, the second of empresario Henri Castro'sqv colonial frontier settlements, was located west of San Antonio in what is today Medina County six miles north of the site of present Hondo. After settling Castroville, Castro decided to establish a series of communities along the perimeter of his land grant. In 1846 he chose a partner, August Ferdinand Louis Huth,qv to manage his colonies in his absence. Huth charged Jules Bourgeois to settle fifty newly arrived European families on Verde and Lucky creeks. Frontier conditions proved difficult for the colonists from the outset. They had to walk to Castroville or San Antonio to conduct business. Verde Creek dried up, and many colonists moved to a site four miles downstream and named their new community New Fountain. Cholera and poisonous wild greens claimed many victims in the Vandenburg community. By 1850 Medina County tax rolls showed sixteen property owners in the original settlement. The Vandenburg School Organization was established in September 1876. A sum of $200, raised by public conscription, helped to build a schoolhouse that was to serve the town for forty-six years before a modern one-room building replaced it in 1922 at a cost of $1200. School records of 1896-97 indicate the Vandenburg school had forty-four students and one teacher. A school house and community cemetery were all that remained of the town by 1953. In 1989 Vandenburg was no longer in existence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Castro Colonies Heritage Association, The History of Medina County, Texas (Dallas: National Share Graphics, 1983). Bobby D. Weaver, Castro's Colony: Empresario Development in Texas, 1842-1865 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985).
Ruben E. Ochoa
