Local History
Ranching Built La Salle County
Cattle ranching has driven the economy of La Salle County since the 1870s and still dominates today.
La Salle County was formed in 1858 and named after French explorer René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The county spans 1,517 square miles of South Texas brush country. Ranching took hold quickly. The census counted just 11,000 cattle in the county in 1870. By 1890, that number had jumped to nearly 73,000, partly because barbed wire let ranchers fence in large tracts of land.
By the mid-1900s, cattle ranching produced roughly 90 percent of county income. Today, the county's landscape still reflects that history — wide-open ranch land, brush country, and few towns. Cotulla, the county seat, was founded by Joseph Cotulla, a Polish immigrant, who donated land to attract the railroad in 1881. The county's Hispanic heritage runs deep — by 2014, about 85 percent of residents identified as Hispanic.
Source to confirm: Handbook of Texas Online — La Salle County