Dabney

DABNEY, TEXAS . Dabney, also known as Whitesmine, was a mining community at the southern end of Farm Road 1022, six miles south of Cline in far southwestern Uvalde County. An asphalt-mining operation was opened by the Lathe Carbon Company at the site in 1888. In 1891 J. G. Smyth purchased 20,000 acres in southwestern Uvalde County that encompassed a portion of the Nueces River and the Lathe Company mining site. In 1906 thirty-one students attended the one-teacher Dabney school. The mine was closed in 1900 and reopened sometime after 1913, most probably in 1923, by a former employee of the Uvalde Rock Asphalt Company, R. L. White, who, after having left his former employers in 1918, returned for a source of raw limestone asphalt to supply his San Antonio-based Alamo Paving Company. White was married to Smyth's daughter Ethel and controlled a small interest in the property. He concluded an agreement with the remainder of the Smyth Ranch owners on September 14, 1923, that permitted his White's Uvalde Mines Company to mine and remove rock asphalt. Beginning in 1923 the Asphalt Belt Railroad transported the raw material to a siding, called Whites, on the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad. By 1928 the Whites Mine Corporation had developed a new process to manufacture on site a cold-mix paving material; the company began to market the new product during the Great Depression .