Elroy

A local story holds that Santa Anna gave land here to an officer, who traded it for a horse and saddle. The community, also known as Driskill, Dutch Waterhole or Hume, was established in 1892 and named by a local storekeeper for his son Leroy. George L. Hume was the first postmaster; after the office closed in 1902, mail came through Del Valle. In 1907 Elroy had a two-teacher school for 107 White students and a one-teacher school for sixty-one Black students. Its population grew from twenty-five in 1933 to 125 by 1947.

What the plaque says

Elroy Swedish and German immigrants began to settle in this area in the 1890s. A post office was established in 1898, and by 1918 there were about 70 families in the area. The community, whose economy was based on cotton farming, consisted of homes, farms, a school, four cotton gins, a blacksmith shop, general store, and three Swedish churches with cemeteries. After a period of decline beginning in the 1930s. The school was consolidated with the Del Valle school district, and the churches disbanded. Renewed settlement and revitalization of the area began in the 1970s. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• McKinney Falls State Park — 6.3 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Texas State Cemetery — 11 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 11 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 11 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.

More markers nearby

• Del Valle Army Air Base (Bergstrom Air Force Base) — 6.3 mi
• Santiago Del Valle Grant — 6.6 mi
• Dr. Jacob Tally Wilhite — 6.7 mi
• Doyle Farm — 9.5 mi