Howard Lake

Howard Lake was a frontier community on Howard Lake, a natural lake, twelve miles east of Pearsall in east central Frio County. A significant portion of the land near Howard Lake was at one time granted to Henri Castro. In 1874 Blanchette's general store and Brown's butcher shop were operating in the Howard Lake community. People journeying from Pearsall to San Antonio in the 1880s often traveled past the lake. According to local tradition, a cattle trail that crisscrossed this San Antonio route was one of the original roads across Frio County; cattle drivers would camp at the lakeshore, often hiding their gold caches in the water as a precaution against raids by Indians or Mexican bandits. In 1884 the Frio County Commissioners Court designated Howard Lake as School District No. 6. In 1907 the one-teacher Howard Lake community school was attended by nineteen students. The Howard Lake community appears to have been abandoned by 1929.