The Ditch

Each farm on the ditch took water on set days, and the system turned chaparral, mesquite, huisache, catclaw and prickly pear into fields of tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupes, grain, black-eyed peas, corn and fruit. A. B. Dillard, a Methodist lay preacher, built the chapel from green elm cut along the Leona, on land given by S. T. Gilbert; it also served as the school and the Masonic lodge, and Dillard ran a sawmill. A wedding was held at the chapel in 1895, the year after the flood, and twenty-four students still attended the Leona school in 1900.

What the plaque says

The Ditch Community established along waterway of Leona Irrigation and Agricultural Association, formed in 1874 by Greenville and W. B. Bowles, A. B. Dillard, Charles T. Rose, A. J. Spencer, and T. E. Taylor. Irrigation produced rich crops; many families settled here. A schoolhouse doubled as church and community center. Settlers gathered in from a large area for dances, weddings and other festivities-- often prolonged. In 1894 flood ruined the farms, and people moved away-- many to Uvalde, to become substantial citizens there. Only a cemetery remains (1 mi. W) of "Ditch" settlement. 1970

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Inge Historical Site — 4.5 mi
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.
• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 6.8 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 7.2 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.

More markers nearby

• Site of Fort Inge — 4.5 mi
• Site of Fort Inge — 4.5 mi
• Garner Army Air Field — 5.7 mi
• USS Uvalde — 6.4 mi