Cotulla, TX

Cotulla is La Salle County’s seat, a South Texas city on I-35 about 27 miles north of Encinal and roughly 80 miles southwest of San Antonio. Its founder, Joseph Cotulla, was a Polish immigrant who gave the railroad a reason to stop: in 1881 he donated 120 acres to encourage the International-Great Northern line to reach the townsite. A depot followed in 1882, then a post office and county-seat designation in 1883. That sequence still makes Cotulla feel like a railroad town at heart, even though modern travelers mostly meet it through the interstate and the wide Brush Country around it.

Today, Cotulla is the county’s main gathering point for government, schools, ranching connections, and everyday services. Cotulla Independent School District runs the local schools, with the high school east of town, and the Brush Country Museum occupies a former one-room schoolhouse in the center. The Nueces River passes through the southern part of the city, adding a water line to an otherwise dry-looking South Texas map. Cotulla’s population was 3,718 in 2020, large enough to support a real county-center rhythm but small enough that the railroad story, the courthouse, the museum, and the surrounding ranch country still sit close together. It is a place built by a rail promise that became a regional home base.