Santiago Del Valle Grant

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Santiago Del Valle Grant. Now settle in, because this particular patch of Texas ground has passed through some remarkable hands before it ever became a state park. McKinney Falls State Park, where you may well be standing or driving near right now, sits right in the heart of an early Texas land grant.

And that grant's story reaches back further than most folks reckon. It originally fell within the empresario contract of a man the marker calls a Texian hero, Ben Milam. That's the company this land kept at the very start.

Ten leagues of land were transferred in 1832 to a man named Santiago del Valle. Now del Valle was no ordinary fellow. At that moment he was serving as secretary of the Mexican government of Coahuila y Texas, and he had previously served as a member of the Mexican Congress.

A man of standing, in other words, acquiring land of standing. Then in 1835, del Valle sold nine of those leagues to Michel Menard. Remember that name.

Because three years later, in 1838, Menard helped found the town of Galveston. The land kept moving. Thomas F.

McKinney, one of Menard's business associates, purchased the Del Valle grant in 1839. And here's where the story gets a little more personal. McKinney's family was probably the first of all these property owners to actually live on the land, putting down roots there in the late 1840s.

But McKinney wasn't holding it all tight. By the time of his death in 1873, he had sold all but approximately two thousand eight hundred acres. The rest of the grant, through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stayed largely agricultural.

Communities grew up from that soil, places like Bluff Springs, Pilot Knob, Creedmoor, and Del Valle, names that still echo across this part of Travis County. The northern portion of the grant got pulled into the spread of urbanization, as land around cities tends to do. But the southern portion held on.

Stayed rural. And that's the piece preserved right here, in this state park. Ten leagues changed hands across decades, crossed names and centuries, and what remains is what you see.

Some ground, it seems, knows how to endure.

What the marker says

McKinney Falls State Park lies in the center of an early Texas land grant that originally fell within the empresario contract of Texian hero Ben Milam. Ten leagues of land were transferred in 1832 to Santiago del Valle, who at that time was secretary of the Mexican government of Coahuila y Texas and had previously served as a member of the Mexican Congress. In 1835 Del Valle sold nine leagues of his land to Michel Menard, who in 1838 helped found the town of Galveston. Thomas F. McKinney, one of the Menard's business associates, purchased the Del Valle grant in 1839. His family probably was the first of the property owners to live on the land, which they began to occupy during the late 1840s. McKinney had sold all but approximately 2,800 acres of the land by the time of his death in 1873. The lands within the Santiago del Valle grant remained primarily agricultural during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Communities such as Bluff Springs, Pilot Knob, Creedmoor, and Del Valle began to develop during this period. While the northern part of the Del Valle grant has become increasingly urbanized, the southern portion remains largely rural, and is preserved in this state park. (1984)