Nellie Leo Schunior School

José Matías Tijerina named Havana for the Cuban port he had visited, on a Spanish grant of 1767, and the settlement had a post office by 1886. Nearby, the river village of Tabasco lost ground to floods in 1908 and 1909 and moved north. In 1926 a Houston developer, J. H. Smith, persuaded residents to incorporate as La Joya, and Felix R. Vela became the first mayor. City government lay dormant until Leo J. Leo petitioned for a new election in 1965. The name means the jewel, after a small lake that early settlers said shone in the sun.

What the plaque says

Nellie Leo Schunior School This school's roots lie in the former town of Havana (2 mi. S), where between 1890 and 1944 area children, most of whom lived on nearby ranches, attended classes in a one-room schoolhouse. Nellie Leo Schunior (1878-1920), who later became the first superintendent of Chapin (now Edinburg) schools, taught in Havana from 1913 until 1916. Several years after her death, persistent flooding of the Rio Grande caused Havana residents to relocate their town to this area. They renamed the town La Joya, and built a new school in 1926 which they named in Schunior's honor. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 7.5 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.
• La Lomita Chapel — 11 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Museum of South Texas History — 20 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.

More markers nearby

• Los Ebanos Ferry Crossing — 5.1 mi
• Penitas — 7.7 mi
• Leo Najo — 9.5 mi
• Texas Citrus Fiesta — 10 mi