Tuleta

Tuleta's school pulled teachers from far outside Texas. Amanda Stoltzfus organized the Tuleta Agriculture High School in 1910, which the Handbook calls the first of its kind in the state, with teachers from Smith College and the University of Wisconsin and dormitories for boarders. The Mennonite church of 1907 doubled as the schoolhouse on weekdays. Oil and gas turned up west of town in 1929, when about 150 people lived here. Tuleta once held Mennonite, Presbyterian and Baptist churches; by 1990 only the Baptist remained.

What the plaque says

Tuleta The Rev. Peter Unzicker led a group of Illinois settlers here in 1906. Buying 53.4 acres of land of the original Uranga Grant and later Chittim-Miller Ranch, he founded Tuleta, named for the daughter of J. M. Chittim. A rail depot and post office were opened. In 1909 Pastor Unzicker organized one of Texas' first Mennonite churches. Townspeople established the innovative Tuleta Agricultural High School in 1910, with Miss Amanda Stoltzfus as principal. Once marketing center for this fertile farming area, Tuleta also had a union church and several business houses. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goliad State Park and Historic Site — 26 mi
  Mission Espíritu Santo on the San Antonio River, a mission ranch whose herds seeded Texas cattle country, rebuilt from ruin by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
• Zaragoza Birthplace State Historic Site — 26 mi
  A rebuilt stone house beside La Bahía marking where Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza, the general of the Battle of Puebla and Cinco de Mayo, was born in 1829.
• Presidio La Bahía — 26 mi
  A Spanish fort on its third site since 1749, held in turn by filibusters, insurgents and Fannin's Fort Defiance, rebuilt in stone in the 1960s around a chapel that never fell.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 26 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Normanna — 3.5 mi
• Benjamin Dudley Tarlton Dougherty — 3.6 mi
• Town of Pettus — 5.3 mi
• Early Trails in Bee County — 5.7 mi