Riomedina

Riomedina (Rio Medina) is a farming community on Farm Road 471 in the Medina River valley six miles north of Castroville in northeastern Medina County. The town is named for its location between two main branches of the Medina River. The first business in the community was a saloon, owned and operated by Armin Boehm around 1900. His son Alexander built a cotton gin and added a general store to his father's saloon in 1908; the general store was used as a warehouse in 1983. The community post office opened in 1908 with Frederick Alexander Boehm as postmaster. By 1914 the settlement had a population of fifteen and several telephone connections. A second saloon was built by Frank Burell in 1910, about the same time that the Medina Lake Dam project began seven miles north of town. The saloon included a platform that extended out over the Medina River near an old bridge and was used for dances and other social gatherings. The dances proved a great success and led to the building of the Mayflower dance hall near the saloon. In the 1950s Milton Haby and his wife purchased the saloon and dance hall; the dance hall was eventually moved intact to Gruene, where it still stood in the late 1980s. In the mid-1920s the Riomedina community was described as a rich farming section with one of the oldest school districts in the county. The school was housed in a one-room tin building, and teachers lived in a two-room structure nearby. The school was the center for three school districts. The community had 200 inhabitants by 1929, and in 1948 it consisted of the school, a number of dwellings, a business, and a population of 100. By the early 1990s Riomedina comprised the post office, around fifty residents, and some eight businesses, including a general store and a restaurant. In 2000 the population was fifty-three.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.