D'Hanis Still Carries the Split Between Old D'Hanis and the Rail Town

D'Hanis looks like one small community along U.S. 90, but its story sits in two spots. The old settlement was about a mile east of today's D'Hanis, on Parkers Creek and the Old San Antonio Road. Henri Castro's agent Theodore Gentilz laid it out in 1847 for twenty-nine Alsatian families, with town lots and twenty-acre farms.

The older village had its own weight before the tracks arrived. Early families built rough shelters, then the rock homes that gave the settlement its look. Fort Lincoln, built nearby in 1849, brought work and protection. By 1850, the place had twenty dwellings and a schoolteacher; later it became a stage stop on the San Antonio-Rio Grande road.

The railroad moved the center of gravity. In 1881, the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway bypassed Old D'Hanis, so a new town grew around the loading depot about one and a half miles west. Over the next few years, the post office, businesses, and residents shifted toward the rail site. The D'Hanis Brick and Tile Company, founded in 1883, gives the community a material legacy as well as a map story.