Texas Small Town History Project
Palo Alto College
Palo Alto College
Clint Coleman
History 1302
History 1302
Clint Coleman
April 10, 2007
April 10, 2007
Los Angeles, Texas
Texas Small Town History Project Palo Alto College |
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Clint Coleman History 1302 |
Clint Coleman April 10, 2007 |
Los Angeles, Texas
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No doubt everyone who is reading this has heard of the city Los Angeles which is located in California, however the Los Angeles that I have developed a large interest in is located in south Texas, which is located approximately 13 miles east of Cotulla on Highway 97. According to the Handbook of Texas Online, the town was developed in 1923 by the F. Z. Bishop Land Company of San Antonio.
The San Antonio, Uvalde, and Gulf Railroad S,A,U,& G Railroad went through the small town and brought in prospects to buy up land, this also brought in hobos, which Mr. Arnie, who was born and grew up in Los Angeles, said were never turned away but, would always give them some food and something to drink. The Bishop Land Company was selling off land 80 acres at a time and the price then was around fifty cents an acre. This was land only with no improvements on it, if the land was cleared of brush the price would go up a little and would go up even more if there was an existing water well on the property.
They have Artesian Wells there that averaged in depth around 2,700 to 3,000 feet. It was a farming and ranching town with little else to do unless you worked at one of the few businesses which consisted of a cotton gin, the school, a Post Office, general store, beer joint, café, and a filling station.
There was a lot of ranching in the area for the time in the 1930's and 40's, and with the S.A.U.& G. Railroad going through the town it helped out the ranchers a lot. The town had a set of cattle pens by town where the railroad would come and pick up loads of three-year-old steers and haul them up to Kansas, where the cattle were to stay for a few months and get fattened up before they were shipped off to St. Louis to be sold. When the ranchers shipped their cattle with the railroad they would send two cowboys to ride along with them and halfway to Kansas they would have to unload the cattle and feed and water them, then load them back up for the rest of the trip.
According to a man who lived there at the time, this was the part of the job the cowboys loved. It was more of a vacation to them than work, considering what their usual daily tasks were. Mr. Arnie told me that at that time their biggest task was doctoring calves, every day, day after day for screw worms. The cowboys would leave at daylight and start roping the infected calves and doctoring them while having to fight off the momma's.
The farmers at that time grew mostly grain and cotton but the cotton crop usually wasn't very good due to the lack of rain unless someone had an irrigated field, which was very uncommon. When it came time for the grain to be thrashed, they had a thrashing buggy pulled by a team of mules and the workers were paid $1.25 a day for this work. They also got three meals a day and got a place to sleep, most of the time it was in the hay loft but as Mr. Arnie tells me, it wasn't so bad. According to the Handbook of Texas by the late 1940's it was mostly a supply point for neighboring ranchers. Most of the farmers and ranchers ended up moving to Cotulla for work due to the hard conditions and the seven year drought in the 1950's. During this drought, most of the kids did not know what rain was, I was told by one person that after this drought when it did rain one of the kids came inside and said that the sky was leaking.
Also around 1946 the Schulz Brothers bought the local beer joint and café, it was called L.A. Café. At the end of the day most of the local ranchers would come in for a few drinks and a meal, everyone particularly liked their T-Bone steaks. He recalled some people from as far away as Devine driving all the way down there just to have one of his steaks. Most people behaved themselves at the bar though, but every once in a while a couple cowboys would have too much to drink and get in a fight. Worst that ever happened in there was a knife fight between a couple guys who cut each other up pretty badly, but they both lived through it. Mr. Arnie sold the L.A. Café around 1960, and moved to Cotulla himself.
The school there was one building that had three separate rooms; one classroom held the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, grades and had According to the Handbook of Texas Online, in 1952 the town had 100 residents and one business; in 1962, 140 residents and four businesses, and in 1974, 140 residents and a post office, a gasoline station, and a small grocery store. In 1980 and 1990 it reported no businesses but still had an estimated population of 140. Today the population of Los Angeles is around six, at least until the evening when the neighboring ranchers show up at the bar which is the only business still in town. Since around 1990 the only attraction left to Los Angeles is the local bar, Ruby's Lounge. The owner/operator is a man in his early fifties, named Robert. Many of the local ranchers and people from, Cotulla, Millet, and Dilley head out to Ruby's, despite the out of the way drive, to relax and play cards, maybe have a drink or two and catch up on what's going on. There are still some bands that come and play weekend gigs there, and Robert himself can play the accordion among other instruments and sometimes finds himself on stage. However at the end of last year, 2006, Ruby's caught on fire and 
one teacher in the room to teach all of those grades. The next room had one teacher also who taught 5th, 6th, and 7th grades. The last classroom taught 8th through 12th grades. The school was also used as the church on Sundays; a Lutheran preacher from a nearby town would come to preach. However when the school closed in 1937, the kids had to travel to Cotulla for their schooling. At this time Highway 97 leading from Los Angeles to Cotulla was nothing more than a dirt road. It wasn't completed until sometime in the early 1940's, and was then called the King's Highway. Until 
then, the ride to school into Cotulla was usually not much of a problem because there was never much rain in that area. When it did rain though, the road as you can imagine became very muddy. I was told by one man who used to make the trip there for school that he remembered more than once getting stuck on the road trying to get to school and other times in which they would go a week without going to school because of the road conditions in the late 1930's.
burnt down. Despite this, people still drive out to Los Angeles to sit in lawn chairs on the old concrete slab under a tarp. Robert has every intention of rebuilding the famous bar, which is what bumper stickers describe as "The home of Rattlesnakes, Coyotes, Cowboys, and Mexicans" and with the help of local ranchers is 
hoping to get started as soon as he can. There was a benefit played for Ruby's during the 2007 wild hog cook off, this just shows you a little bit of how much people really want this place to open back up. The few people who know where Los Angeles Texas is today, mostly only know it because of Ruby's it's the only thing that's kept the town known this much and everyone is looking forward to see it rebuilt.