LaCoste, TX

LaCoste is a Medina County city on the southwestern edge of the San Antonio metro, with Medina Valley Independent School District serving local students. The settlement began as Fernando beside the Southern Pacific Railroad and the road now known as FM 471, a few miles southeast of Castroville. Its post office opened under that name in 1893; five years later, the town was renamed LaCoste for Jean B. LaCoste, a San Antonio businessman born in France. Rail connections helped move cotton, corn, oats, pecans, and honey, and early business life included cotton gins, a bank, and a weekly newspaper.

Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, built in 1912, remains one of the city’s most recognizable historic buildings, with Corinthian columns, Gothic arches, and stained glass. The surrounding landscape is tied to South Texas farming and to the water infrastructure created after Medina Lake’s irrigation canals reached the area. LaCoste incorporated in 1969, and its present-day rhythm still mixes residential streets, farm roads, school schedules, and regional trips into Castroville and San Antonio. It is a small city with a clear railroad-era beginning and a landscape shaped by crops, canals, and the highway that passes through it.