DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the mills of Bandera. Now settle in, because this story starts — as so many Texas stories do — with somebody standing on a hill, looking down at something worth cutting. The year is 1852, and three men named A.M.
Milstead, Thomas Odem, and P.D. Saner have made camp on a hill above a supply of cypress trees sitting in a hairpin curve of the Medina River, west of Castroville. No mill, no machinery — just men and hand tools, chopping cypress shingles one at a time.
That right there is where it begins. But the real engine of the operation arrives that same year, in June, when a Castroville mill owner named Charles DeMontel enters an agreement with John James and John H. Herndon to establish a sawmill and shingle manufacturing operation at that very site.
DeMontel picks up his horse-powered mill and moves it from Castroville to this new location — a migrant shingle camp perched on the Medina River that would one day grow into the city of Bandera. Now, a mill is only as good as the hands running it, and James, Montel and Company knew they needed settlers and workers. So in 1854, they recruited a group of immigrants newly arrived to Texas from Upper Silesia, Poland — sixteen families in all.
Those sixteen families didn't just come to work the mill. They helped construct a dam across the river and dig a millrace all the way from the initial mill at First Street to the site of later mills at Fourteenth Street. That is a lot of digging.
Meanwhile, as the operation grew, DeMontel was acquiring land at auction to house the workers, and the whole enterprise kept expanding — eventually adding a flour mill to the operation. And what this collection of mills produced mattered far beyond Bandera. Those shingles roofed much of the region's construction, including U.S.
Army installations — Fort Inge, Camp Wood, Camp Verde, Fort Lincoln, and Fort Concho. The first industry of Bandera was supplying the frontier itself. Now, you might wonder how a story this sturdy ends.
Here's how. Major flooding came twice in 1900 — in April and again in August. The Medina River, the same river that made all of this possible, rose up and washed the mills away.
Just like that, the hand-chopped shingle camp, the horse-powered mill hauled in from Castroville, the millrace dug by sixteen Polish families, the shingles that roofed army forts across the Texas frontier — all of it became, as the marker puts it, just a memory. That hairpin curve in the river gave Bandera everything it needed to get started. Then one day, it took it all back.
What the marker says
Communities in the 19th century relied on mills to provide lumber, shingles, flour and cloth. Local millers and blacksmiths were integral community members, providing the necessary materials for early development. Stephen F. Austin reported in 1833 that eight mills were operating in his Colony, and during the subsequent two decades, with substantially more settlers coming to Texas, demand for milled products increased dramatically. In 1852, A.M. Milstead, Thomas Odem and P.D. Saner camped on a hill above a supply of cypress in a hairpin curve of the Medina River west of Castroville. There, they chopped cypress shingles by hand. In June of that year, Charles DeMontel, a Castroville mill owner, entered an agreement with John James and John H. Herndon to establish a sawmill and shingle manufacturing operation at the site. DeMontel moved his horse-powered mill from Castroville to the new location, a migrant shingle camp that would grow to be the city of Bandera. In need of settlers and workers, the James, Montel & Company recruited a group of immigrants newly arrived to Texas from Upper Silesia, Poland in 1854. The recruits, consisting of sixteen families, helped construct a dam across the river and dig a millrace along the river from the initial mill at First Street to the site of later mills at Fourteenth Street. As the operation grew, DeMontel acquired land at auction for worker housing. The Bandera mills, which later included a flour mill, provided shingles for much of the region's construction, including U.S. Army installations at Fort Inge, Camp Wood, Camp Verde, Fort Lincoln and Fort Concho. Major flooding in April and August 1900 washed away the mills, and the first industry of Bandera became just a memory. (2006)