Encinal, TX

Encinal is a La Salle County city in South Texas, with 540 residents in the 2020 census. Interstate 35 Business passes through the community, following the rail-and-highway corridor that put the town on the map. Railroad officials gave it a name drawn from the Spanish word for an oak grove, and the early settlement grew into a shipping center for sheep and cattle. The town’s streets sit in open ranch country about twenty-seven miles south of Cotulla.

By 1890, Encinal’s population reached roughly 900, when general stores, schools, a post office, churches, and livestock traffic filled out the center. Ranching remains the area’s strongest through line, with natural-gas wells adding an energy chapter to the older cattle economy. Cotulla Independent School District serves local students, and the main street now carries a smaller commercial footprint than it did during the town’s railroad years. Encinal is a South Texas city where an oak-grove name, a rail stop, ranching, and a long highway corridor meet.