Chatfield

Knippa, originally known as Chatfield, is on the Southern Pacific Railroad, U.S. Highway 90, and the Frio River, between Sabinal and Uvalde in southeastern Uvalde County. It was named for founder George Knippa, who moved his family to the site in the 1880s. Knippa had been a frequent visitor to the semiarid Frio River area of Uvalde County in the 1870s and early 1880s, a period of abundant rainfall in the area, and witnessed an open country of luxuriant grazing land traversed by spring-fed rivers. He moved his family from Fayette County to the railroad siding of Chatfield soon after the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway had extended its railroad line west from San Antonio to Uvalde.

The period of abundant rainfall in the Frio River region ended with the drought of the early 1890s, dashing the hopes of many of the farming families who had followed Knippa to the area. Around 1900 the rains returned, and a new wave of settlers, mostly Germans, moved to Knippa. A post office was opened in 1898. On February 16, 1898, the Uvalde County Commissioners Court established School District No. 12 at Knippa and authorized a school building. In 1900 fourteen students attended the one-teacher school. A two-room school was built in 1907.