WOODWARD, TEXAS. Woodward is a rural community seven miles northwest of Cotulla on Farm Road 469 in northwestern La Salle County. It was established on the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad in 1907 as a land development project and named for D. J. Woodward, the promoter. The town was granted a post office in 1907 and by 1910 had a population of fifty; in 1922 it had a school with ninety-six students. By the late 1920s Woodward had the school, the railroad depot, a hotel, a cotton gin, a church, and a grocery store. According to one account 173 students were enrolled in the town's school in 1931. The town declined rapidly during the 1930s. In 1937 Woodward's railroad depot was closed, and by 1940 the town had only one store and ten residents. The town's post office was closed in 1955. In 1974 the community had no businesses; in 1990 the population was twenty. By 2000 the population had dropped to ten.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Stanley D. Casto, Settlement of the Cibolo-Nueces Strip: A Partial History of La Salle County (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill Junior College Press, 1969). Annette Martin Ludeman, La Salle: La Salle County (Quanah, Texas: Nortex, 1975).
