DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passing it along. Out here in Uvalde County, there's a place folks used to call The Ditch. Not the most glamorous name you'll ever hear, but names like that have a way of sticking — and this one has a story behind it worth slowing down for.
It starts in 1874, when a handful of men decided that water, properly guided, could turn hard country into something worth living on. Greenville and W. B.
Bowles, A. B. Dillard, Charles T.
Rose, A. J. Spencer, and T.
E. Taylor — they came together to form the Leona Irrigation and Agricultural Association. And along the waterway they built, a whole community took root.
Irrigation produced rich crops, and word gets around when land starts giving back what you put into it. Families came. Then more families.
A schoolhouse went up, and like so many out-of-the-way places in Texas, it didn't stop at being just a schoolhouse — it doubled as a church, a community center, whatever the moment called for. Now here's the part I want you to picture. Settlers gathered in from a large area — a large area, mind you — for dances, weddings, and other festivities.
And the marker takes care to note that these gatherings were often prolonged. I'll leave what that means to your imagination, but I suspect nobody was rushing home early. For a stretch of years, The Ditch was the kind of place that held people.
Community, crops, celebration. It had everything a settlement needs to believe in itself. Then 1894 arrived.
A flood came through and ruined the farms. Not damaged — ruined. And when the land is gone, there's not much to hold a person in place.
People moved away, many of them to Uvalde, where they went on to become substantial citizens. Substantial citizens. That phrase is doing some quiet work there.
These weren't people broken by what happened — they rebuilt, they carried on, they mattered. But The Ditch itself? It didn't survive.
Today, one mile to the west of where that community once stood, there is a cemetery. That's all that remains of the settlement. No schoolhouse, no dance floor, no irrigation association.
Just the place where they laid their dead, still out there keeping watch over ground that flooded and moved on without them. Some places leave you a building. The Ditch left a cemetery and a name — and I think that's its own kind of stubborn permanence.
What the marker says
Community established along waterway of Leona Irrigation and Agricultural Association, formed in 1874 by Greenville and W. B. Bowles, A. B. Dillard, Charles T. Rose, A. J. Spencer, and T. E. Taylor. Irrigation produced rich crops; many families settled here. A schoolhouse doubled as church and community center. Settlers gathered in from a large area for dances, weddings and other festivities-- often prolonged. In 1894 flood ruined the farms, and people moved away-- many to Uvalde, to become substantial citizens there. Only a cemetery remains (1 mi. W) of "Ditch" settlement. 1970