The Longhorn Chapter of the N.H.R.S. presents . . .
The San Antonio And Gulf Shore Railroad
1958 railroad map detail showing the San Antonio & Gulf
Shore Railroad in between the Galveston Harrisburg &
San Antonio Railroad which ran through Seguin and the San
Antonio & Aransas Pass which ran through Floresville.
The chapter is indebted to the Lavernia Historical Association.
This group, formed in 2002 has already performed great work towards preserving the
heritage of this historic town first settle around 1853. Its president, Elaine Mazurek, has
been of inestimable assistance, providing photographs and county maps that show light on other
towns served by the railroad.
We are also indebted to the Sutherland Springs Museum, which is open on the first
Saturday of every month.
The San Antonio and Gulf Shore Railroad is perhaps the most overlooked
railroad that originated out of San Antonio. It was begun in 1893. Like
many railroads, it was begun with very ambitious plans. As with the Galveston Harrisburg and
San Antonio in 1877, and the San Antonio & Aransas Pass in 1884, it was hoped the new
railroad would reach a deep water port in the Gulf. By 1896, the company had reached Sutherland
Springs, some 26 miles. It owned two locomotives and sixteen cars. But
with earnings as low as $400 for passengers and $600 for freight, the
company was forced to foreclose.
Red indicates the 26 miles built by the original company. The green
shows the amount added by the San Antonio & Gulf. the remaining 46 miles to
Cuero was added by the Southern Pacific in 1907.
To make matters worse, the group of investors that started the railroad soon disintegrated
in bitterly opposed factions which led to nasty court battles and the loss of several fortunes
of some very prominent men. One of these was former Texas Governor, John Ireland, of Seguin,
who lost his entire estate of $200,000 and died not long after. S.G. Reed covers the episode quite
extensively in his 1941 book, "The Railroads of Texas." In 1894, the railroad was using a
very old wood burning locomotive. After the train left the (G.H. & S.A.) depot on Austin Street,
it had to stop every few miles to take on more wood. It took five to six hours to reach
Lavernia, The crew, Jud and Jes Fry, combining the roles of company President, Conductor, Engineer,
and Brakeman, would pass the time playing poker in the railroads "General Office," the caboose.
Detail from an 1897 S.A. & G. bond
A new company, backed by the Southern Pacific, was formed in 1897 and called the San
Antonio & Gulf. The new
company extended the main line by six miles and reached Stockdale the same year. They
also added some spur lines. One went to Cibolo from Sutherland Springs and another
from Lavernia to some sand pits. By 1903, they reported owning two locomotives and
eighteen cars. They had $15,000 in passenger earnings and $46,000 from freight.
In 1905, the Southern Pacific was authorized by the legislature to acquire the company and
it was folded into its Galveston Harrisburg & San Antonio's Victoria Division.
As part of the take over, the S.P. agreed to extend the line to Cuero, another 46 miles.
Timetable detail from 1941.
Reaching Cuero was an important step forward for the line and ensured its long term
viability. Cuero was already served by the San Antonio & Aransas Pass, on its
line between Kenedy and Yoakum. The S.P. also had a line to Cuero from Victoria. It had
been built in 1873 by the Gulf, Western Texas & Pacific railroad, the successor to a
company called the San Antonio & Mexican Gulf, which dated back all the way to 1850. In
a way the addition completed the original plan, albeit fifty seven years later and under
completely different companies. The extension created a direct line between
Victoria and San Antonio. With the S.P.'s de facto control, and later full ownership, of
the San Antonio & Aransas Pass, the giant railroad had a full grid network in coastal Texas.
1938 Wilson County map details, showing Lavernia, Sutherland Springs and Stockdale.
For all intents and purposes, the railroad follows the route of HWY 1346, which starts
as East Houston Street and ends at HWY 87, just north of Lavernia. A stub of the line
still exists. It terminates just inside Loop 410 at East Houston. Along its route, some of the
communities served by the railroad have risen and some have fallen. The line crosses from the
north of the highway at Martinez, which today has a population of around 100, to the other side
and headed to a small community called Saunders. There may have been an opportunity to get on and off the train in
Martinez - no details exist. Edmund Ebrom, who wrote a letter of inquiry to Paula Allen, who
writes a local history column in the Sunday San Antonio Express News, recalls
traveling on the train
in 1940, when he was about five years old. He says there was no depot as such, just a railroad
section house and a small platform for passengers. Adkins, the next stop on the line, definitely had a depot. (We are still looking for pictures of
it.) Adkins is located on the edge of Loop 1604, and abuts St. Hedwig. St. Hedwig is now the
bigger of the two communities. It has seen just about all of its growth, as a dormitory town,
since the railroad was removed in 1971. The black & white railroad map shows every stop and siding and so is not a good guide
where depots may have been located. You can see Carpenter on the 1958 colored map on this page
but it is now a very small community indeed. On a dirt road just north of HWY 1346 there are
some visible railroad ties still in the ground. It is rumored that the old railroad section
house is still in its original site in Carpenter, so more sleuthing is probably in order.
Lavernia, however, is doing well. It was founded in 1851 and has seen steady but hardly meteoric
growth over its 150 year history. It was able to incorporate in 1980, and has a population
of around one thousand. It is the center of its own school district. It had a good sized
depot, and a number of businesses used rail service for the transportation of their goods. These
included the town cotton gin. The tracks went right by the company's buildings and you can see
an exposed tie or two on the edge of the road to this day and the route the tracks took through
the town are quite obvious from there. By 1915, the town had two gins, a pottery plant of some
distinction and a brick works.
In 2002 the Lavernia Historical Association was formed, so that the town's history would be
collected and celebrated. In the first edition of "LAVERNIA LEGACIES," the town's railroad
history was featured prominently and the chapter is very grateful to the
Association for
their generous permission to reproduce several pictures here. The pictures come from Helen Freeman
who also provided some reminiscences for the magazine starting around 1917. She recalled that the depot was the
place you called to get the accurate time. Household clocks and watches were not so accurate in those
days but the railroad clock was under government mandate to be correct and was inspected on a monthly
basis to ensure it remained on time. The depot also held the town's telegraph station. It
was also the place that mail was delivered to and picked up from. The depot was segregated, if
you can believe that so relatively small a structure could accommodate the duplication.
Cattle tended to be moved at night and their plaintive mooing could be heard as you
tried to sleep. Troops were moved on this line from San Antonio to Houston during World War
One, and Ms. Freeman, then a girl of eight, would go to the depot to wave and cheer them on.
She traveled to San Antonio with her mother quite often up to 1918. She made her last trip
by train from Lavernia in 1947, to visit her brother. She took her three children with her.
The Association is to be commended for their efforts. Everyone benefits when these personal
touches can be added to the harder, colder facts of history.
To visit the Lavernia Historical Association website, click
•Lavernia•
Sutherland Springs
probably had the most success from the arrival of the railroad. As a good example of how sometimes
whole towns can be mobile, most everyone left the town's original site, once the county
seat, and moved to New Sutherland Springs, nearer to the railroad depot on the east side of the
river. The town was a tourist destination and supported a grand 52 room hotel plus other
related businesses. By 1923, the tourist boom was over, the hotel was closed and ultimately
demolished. Following the construction of HWY 87 near the town's original site, most residents
moved back, and the site of "New" Sutherland Springs has been returned to agriculture.
The area was first settled in 1949 by John Sutherland who originally named the place
Sulfur Springs.
The post office notified him that the name was already taken and it was changed in 1851. The
town was flourishing by 1860, including tourism to the many wells in the area. The town was
selected by the state legislature to be the county seat of newly formed Wilson County but this
distinction was lost when nearby Floresville was chosen by popular vote in the late 1880s. As
usual in these cases, there was a bitter fall out over the decision, which was shaped in part
by the fact that Floresville was on the railroad, the San Antonio & Aransas Pass, and Sutherland
Springs was not. The change of county seat for this reason was fairly common at this time such
was the importance of rail service.
As mentioned, the railroad ran on the east side of Cibolo Creek, a good distance from the
center of the town. After some legal difficulties, the Sutherland Springs Development
Corporation platted out a new town on the other side of the river and, due in large part to
the popularity of the various springs and the resulting tourism, New Sutherland Springs began
to outgrow the original town site and a number of the old town's businesses moved to the new site.
The area took on the slogan of "The Saratoga Of The South." It is said that not only did
people from all over the USA come to take the healing waters, many traveled from as far away
as Europe to do likewise. The hotel did good business and the pools and bath houses also
did good trade. A bank was located in the town along with a cinema for evening entertainment.
Regrettably a flood in 1913 all but demolished the bath houses and the pools. Changing
recreational tastes and the outbreak of World War One did not help and the town's
renown as a tourist destination was soon to fade.
In 1914, however, these thoughts were far from the mind of Thomas Williams who bought the town
site and rebuilt the bath houses. He built an extension from the main line right to the pools.
The line went right behind his hotel as well so there was virtual door to door service for the
infirmed. In those days people also traveled with an almost inconceivable amount of luggage
so being closer to the train was of probably a great relief for all concerned. Soon Southern Pacific
was running two trains a day to Sutherland Springs for the princely fare of 50 cents return.
The first train left at 8:30 AM and arrived at Sutherland Springs depot at 9:50AM and the
baths ten minutes later. It headed back at 10:30 AM and reached San Antonio by 12:00 noon.
The second train departed at 2:00 PM and reached Sutherland Spring depot at 3:20 PM and the
baths at 3:30 PM. It began its return at 4:30 PM and reached San Antonio at 6:00 PM. As a
small matter, both depots in Sutherland Springs and San Antonio rejoiced in the same name, "Sunset." In
fact, the chances are that the one in Sutherland Springs was given the name first, as the far
grander STATION in San Antonio was not opened until 1903, whereas the depot
in Sutherland Springs was probably completed earlier. While this is only conjecture, one can
wonder if Southern Pacific would allow the double use of the name under any other circumstances.
Additionally, Sutherland Springs had saw mills, a cotton gin and agricultural produce such as water melons,
for which the railroad would leave a car to be filled in time for the next train. The
Sutherland Springs Sand Company was another bulk user of the railroad. On a spur track near
Railroad Street, it had a pump capable of filling a car in as little as twenty minutes. These
businesses did well but the tourism peak soon ended, and the hotel closed its doors to the
public in 1923. By 1941, the depot was sold to a private owner who relocated it to nearby Stockdale
where it can still be found today, substantially rebuilt but still recognizable. In its place
the railroad installed a curious booth like waiting room which was a popular place for local
kids to play in. Following the improvements to HWY 87, which went through the site of "Old
Sutherland springs, the new town faded away and now you can hardly find a trace of it. To add injury
to insult, when the road to Seguin, FM 539, was improved it was run right through the site of the once
grand Sutherland Springs hotel.
This line was one of the first to be abandoned in this region. Passenger trains probably ceased
in the early 1950s. All remaining traffic had ceased by the end of the decade. The S.P.
maintained the line from Cuero to Stockdale longer than the rest but this too was pulled up by
the mid 1970s. According to a landowner in Carpenter, the abandoned tracks stayed in place,
unused, until the mid 1960s. The rails themselves were taken away by the
railroad but the ties
were offered to local residents. All the trestle bridges were dismantled to remove any liability to the railroad. Places where the tracks had crossed
over the highway were re-paved. Soon enough, landowners began removing many embankments to allow
for a return to productive agricultural use or other aesthetic reasons. Today there is almost
no trace that a railroad was ever there and just about everyone has forgotten about it. Within
San Antonio it is next to impossible to find a trace of the line that paralleled Houston Street and
even exactly where it joined the main line is an open question. The old SA &GS has only managed
to achieve the rarest mentions in any books about railroading in the area. We hope to find more
information and, of course, more pictures. A little more attention seems to be being paid to this
fascinating line and we are glad to be a part of this resurgence of interest.
Information Sources
The Texas State Historical Association Online
S.G. Reed, "The Railroad of Texas," published 1941
The Lavernia Historical Association
The Sutherland Springs Museum
John Decker, Fire Chief, St. Hedwig VFD, (Former Chairman of Texas Transportation Museum)
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