Van Raub

Van Raub was near Cibolo Creek at a site just off present Interstate Highway 10, twenty-four miles northwest of downtown San Antonio in northwestern Bexar County. The community was established on a survey of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway in 1884 and was named for Van Raub Byron, owner of the first local business. A church, a school, a cotton gin, and a weekly newspaper (the Advance) were established during 1885. The population was reported as 300 in 1886, and a post office opened in 1889, but the town declined with the building of the railroad west to Kerrville. The Van Raub community reported 150 residents in 1910, when Henry Monken was railroad agent and postmaster. The community post office was replaced by rural delivery from Boerne in 1919. During the mid-1930s Van Raub still had a school, a store, and a few houses, but after World War II most of its remaining residents moved away. In the early 1990s only a few scattered houses remained. At that time Fair Oaks Ranch, a suburban development, was located nearby.