Lombardy Irrigation Ditch

Rio Frio's irrigated tracts grew cotton, corn, oats, tobacco and wheat, but the boll weevil arrived early in the twentieth century, and the town's cotton gin, the last in Real County, closed before the end of World War I. Ranching took over, especially Angora goats; Rio Frio's Bob Davis was the first president of the Texas Angora Goat Raisers Association. In the 1940s the 1920 church became a mission for the Mexican and Mexican American tenant farmers and ranch workers whose labor had sustained the place since the canal was dug.

What the plaque says

Lombardy Irrigation Ditch Dug in 1868, in pick-and-shovel operation, by Lombardy Irrigation Company, whose officers were N. M. C. Patterson, W. F. Smith, and T. Watkins. Besides channeling water to irrigate over 800 acres, the 2-mile ditch furnished power for a cotton gin and shingle, grist, and flour mills. The settlement which grew up in the area was known as "The Ditch" until a post office was established in 1875. It was then named "Rio Frio" ("Cold River"). For a century the ditch has irrigated lands of families of two original company officers. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Garner State Park — 2.5 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.
• Real County Historical Museum — 6.6 mi
  A small county museum in Leakey, at the head of the Frio Canyon, with a log-cabin parlor, an 1880s horse-drawn hearse, a wool and mohair shearing machine and 1910s jail cells.

More markers nearby

• Civilian Conservation Corps at Garner State Park — 3.4 mi
• Catherine McLauren — 6.3 mi
• Leakey Cemetery — 6.4 mi
• Real County — 6.5 mi