Medina's Apple Story Started With Dwarf Orchards in the 1980s

Medina sits where State Highway 16 meets Farm Road 337, twelve miles northwest of Bandera. A sawmill was in the area by 1865, and the post office opened in 1880, long before apple signs became part of the local shorthand.

The apple turn came much later. Baxter Adams, Jr., started an experimental orchard of dwarf apple trees in 1980, and apples were ready for sale in 1984. In 1989, the Texas Department of Agriculture declared Medina the Apple Capital of Texas.

That makes the nickname more useful than a booster phrase. It marks a real shift in a ranching and hunting-lease area, when small trees and orchard rows became part of the Medina valley's identity. Drive through on Highway 16, and the apple story is a clue to how this part of Bandera County learned to describe itself. It is food history, but it is also land-use history in a valley people already knew for ranches and roads. The orchard note gives Medina its own texture inside the county, which is exactly what a good local note should do.