Cotulla's First School

By 1885 the Cotulla school enrolled 135 students, a measure of how fast the railroad town filled. The plaque's wording, that it served the town's White children, names the rule of the time: Mexican American children, who were a majority of the county by 1930, were kept out of White schools for decades. A brick school on Tilden Street replaced this one in 1908, and new elementary and high schools were built in the mid-1920s. County school districts, four as late as 1955, had become one by the early 1980s.

What the plaque says

Cotulla's First School The International and Great Northern Railroad developed Cotulla in 1881, and the first school opened on this site in 1885, with classes for primary, intermediate and advanced .J.M. Gunning and E.A. Williams were the first teachers. Lightning struck the first schoolhouse and it burned to the ground. A former house, with the porch removed and a bell added, was moved to this site and used for the next school building. County teacher institutes and summer normal schools were held here during summer months. The site served Cotulla's Caucasian schoolchildren until a new brick school was built on Tilden Street in 1908. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brush Country Museum — steps away
  La Salle County's local museum, with a segregated-schools display that sets the scene for the Welhausen School, where Lyndon Johnson taught Mexican American children in 1928-29.
• Chaparral Wildlife Management Area — 14 mi
  A 15,200-acre South Texas brush country research tract in La Salle and Dimmit counties, open to the public in spring and summer, with a short accessible trail and a long ranching past.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church of Cotulla — steps away
• La Salle County — steps away
• Cotulla City Park — steps away
• First Deep Artesian Well — steps away