Townsite of Zella

Zella was named for a developer's daughter, Zella Bland, and sold as a farmer's paradise in thousands of brochures. In 1913 the Zella Townsite Company drilled an artesian well and built a depot, a one-room school and a hotel. The town got a post office in 1914 and lost it in 1916; the irrigation works the brochures promised were never built, and by 1917 drought had discouraged settlers. The depot was torn down in 1945, though Zella stayed a cattle shipping point until 1959. In 1985 the hotel still took in hunters.

What the plaque says

Townsite of Zella Organized 1913, with 189 city blocks laid off along San Antonio, Uvalde & Gulf Railroad. Structures built included depot, store-post office, schoolhouse, hotel. A water well was drilled. War and the 1917 drouth stifled growth. Few lots were sold; land ownership was retained by founders. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Choke Canyon State Park — 27 mi
  A reservoir state park on the Frio River in two units, built after a 1982 dam, with birds, alligators and fishing on land people have crossed for more than 10,000 years.
• Brush Country Museum — 28 mi
  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.
• Atascosa County Courthouse — 29 mi
  The only surviving Mission Revival courthouse in Texas, built in 1912-13 on Jourdanton's town circle after a county seat vote that some residents still call a theft.
• Frio Pioneer Jail Museum — 29 mi
  Pearsall's 1884 county jail, the town's oldest building, used for 83 years and now a free museum with a sheriff's home downstairs and six cells above.

More markers nearby

• Old San Antonio-Laredo Road — 12 mi
• Franklin Ranch — 15 mi
• Cross — 15 mi
• Old McMullen College — 16 mi