Site of Los Olmos

Duane's take

Now, this one comes straight from the official marker, and I'm just the voice carryin' it down the road to you. About a mile and a half northeast of where you're rolling right now, the land holds a memory most folks drive right past without ever knowing it. The first permanent settlement in all of Brooks County.

They called it Los Olmos. And the story of how it got there starts with a land grant, a man named Ramon de la Garza, and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Around 1830, that grant, El Paisano, was given to de la Garza, and Los Olmos took root at the southwest corner of that land.

Out here where the brush runs thick and the sky runs wide. The village sat near the main route to the Rio Grande, which meant it wasn't hidden from the world. It was right on the path of it.

The people who settled this region had come originally from northern Mexico, ranchers who knew this kind of country, who understood what the land asked of you. By 1880, Los Olmos had grown into something real. A post office.

Stores. A school. Not a promise of a town.

An actual town. That schoolhouse kept its doors open all the way until 1945, and in between lessons, it served as the site of religious services conducted by traveling priests, men who covered enormous distances to bring something sacred to a place that didn't always have a church on the corner. But here is where the story turns, the way so many stories out here do.

As the town of Falfurrias grew, Los Olmos began to decline. The road that once gave the village its purpose may well have led its people somewhere else. The post office, the stores, the school, all of it quieted.

And yet, descendants of the founders of Los Olmos still live in this area today. The settlement is gone, but the bloodline isn't. The land out there remembers, even when the buildings don't.

What the marker says

(1.5 miles northeast) The first permanent settlement in Brooks County, Los Olmos was located at the southwest corner of El Paisano Land Grant, given to Ramon de la Garza about 1830 by the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Situated near the main route to the Rio Grande, the village served a region settled originally by ranchers from northern Mexico. By 1880, it had a post office, stores, and a school, which operated until 1945. The schoolhouse was the site of services conducted by traveling priests. As the town of Falfurrias grew, Los Olmos began to decline. Descendants of its founders still reside in this area. (1976)