Still another

[hotwine]

Helotes was once a day's ride NW from downtown San Antonio, on the stage line to Bandera. Today, SA has us surrounded.

It was once the norm for towns in Texas to be 15-20 miles apart, depending on terrain and water supply, to allow a rider to easily travel from one to the next in a day on horseback. Now, they're frequently contiguous, with the city limits of one butting up against the limits of another. Or in the case of our little township of 4500 souls, being surrounded by a sprawling city of 1.2 million. (Helotes tripled in size from 1990 to 2000.)

BTW, Helotes (hell-OAT-is) is taken from the Spanish word for corn. When Spaniards entered this area in the early 18th century, they found the local tribes cultivating corn in the little valleys among the hills, and they began to refer to it as "the corn place". Today, an ear of corn is featured prominently in the township's official seal.