Guadalupe

Guadalupe is on U.S. Highway 87 five miles southeast of Victoria in the center of some of Victoria County's richest and oldest farmlands. Pioneer farmers and ranchers settled the area in the late 1820s, soon after Martín De León established his colony in 1824. The site was named for Guadalupe Victoria, first president of the Republic of Mexico and De León's patron. Apparently the name became official only in 1860, when the San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railway, connecting Victoria to Port Lavaca, located a stop at the site. The community had a post office from 1850 to 1852 and from 1897 to about 1930. Guadalupe was served by a rural common school until the 1950s, when the Victoria Independent School District established the Guadalupe Elementary School. Guadalupe was also a center of activity for the Victoria County Farmers' Union, organized in 1958. The town's population remained about 120 from 1900 to the 1980s, except for a severe drop during the 1950s and 1960s; it was 106 from 1985 through 2000.