City Hotel

In the hotel's first years LaCoste was a busy farm town on the Southern Pacific main line. By 1914 it had 400 residents, a Catholic church and school, two cotton gins, the LaCoste National Bank and a weekly paper, the Medina Valley Herald, and it shipped cotton, corn, oats, pecans and honey. In 1936 some German was still spoken; half the people claimed Alsatian ancestry and a quarter were Hispanic, and there were separate schools for Hispanic and white students. Cotton, oats, hay and vegetables grew on farms watered from Medina Lake through an elaborate canal system.

What the plaque says

City Hotel Built in 1912 by Alsatian immigrant and prominent local developer Emil Schmidt, the City Hotel offered public lodging previously unavailable to visitors to La Coste. Its proximity to the railroad depot made it an ideal location to offer food and lodging to the growing number of visitors and business people involved in sales, expansion of the railroad, and the building of a dam in northeastern Medina County. The elegantly furnished rooms, verandas, and restaurant and ready clientele combined to make the hotel and restaurant an immediate success. Gus and Maggie (Ma) Keller bought the property in 1928 during the National prohibition against the sale of alcoholic beverages. They nevertheless ran a saloon in the hotel known as "Kellers Place" which according to local tradition allowed patrons to gamble and drink in a back room, an activity which because of timely telephone calls avoided police detection. Maggie, who managed the saloon for almost four decades, became the subject of local legend. One of the saloon's most prominent features was the large number of bottle caps which covered its walls and ceiling. The hotel is a local landmark recognized by generations of people traveling through or visiting La Coste. 1994

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Landmark Inn State Historic Site — 4.7 mi
  A store and stage stop at the Medina River ford in Henri Castro's Alsatian town, with a mill race under the ground and rooms you can still rent for the night.
• Mission Concepción — 20 mi
  A stone church dedicated in 1755 that has never fallen into ruin, its convento ceilings still painted, and the ground where the Texas Revolution's fight for San Antonio began.
• San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — 20 mi
  Four working parish churches on the Mission Trail south of downtown, with the visitor center at Mission San Jose, the Queen of the Missions, and the descendants who still worship there.
• King William Historic District — 21 mi
  Mission farmland turned German merchants' quarter on the San Antonio River, renamed in World War I, then saved by a neighbor who restored fourteen houses, starting with his own.

More markers nearby

• Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church — 0.3 mi
• Site of Idlewild Community — 1.7 mi
• Henri Castro — 4.8 mi
• Site of the Homestead of Henri Castro — 4.9 mi