Zavala County

Crystal City began as a real-estate venture. In 1905 developers Carl Groos and E. J. Buckingham bought the Cross S Ranch, sold most of it as farms and platted a townsite named for the area's clear artesian water. A post office, rail service and the first school came in 1908, and the town incorporated in 1910 with about 530 people. Spinach, first grown here in the winter of 1917 to 1918, made it a winter vegetable shipping point. A Popeye statue went up across from city hall in 1937.

What the plaque says

Zavala County In 1832 land grant of Mexico to John Charles Beales. Lake Espantosa was campsite on road from Mexico to San Antonio. County created from Uvalde and Maverick, 1858. During the Civil War, especially in 1863-1864, was crossed by Cotton Road to Eagle Pass, entry point of Confederate goods. Including guns, powder, medicines. Organized 1884. Named in honor of Lorenzo de Zavala (1788-1836), signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence; first vice president to serve Republic of Texas. Original county seat was Batesville. Since 1927 it has been Crystal City. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crystal City Family Internment Camp Site — 5.8 mi
  The only wartime camp built for whole families, where Japanese, German and Italian Americans and Latin American deportees were held from 1942 to 1948, now marked by cottage foundations and a pool.
• My Story Museum — 6.6 mi
  A free museum on Zavala Street holding three stories of one small Texas town: the 1969 student walkout and Raza Unida years, the internment camp and its veterans.
• Dimmit County Courthouse — 17 mi
  An 1884 Italianate courthouse wrapped in a 1920s Classical Revival remake, in the seat of a county whose white primary kept Mexican Americans out of politics for nearly fifty years.

More markers nearby

• Crystal City Family Internment Camp, World War II — 5.8 mi
• Zavala County — 6.5 mi
• Burleson Cemetery — 14 mi
• Dimmit County — 17 mi